Alumni

1944
Adele Olney Stevens Vail, an internist, died Nov. 26, 2020. She was 101. Dr. Vail married another alumnus in 1946, William Vail’46. She practiced in New Jersey before retiring in 1984 and was most recently living in Ignacio, Colorado. She was preceded in death by her husband and a son and is survived by another son, a daughter, and a grandson.

1949
Ed H. Updike, a surgeon who practiced for 30 years in Ocala, Florida, died Oct. 3, 2020. He was 93. After medical school, he completed a fellowship in surgery at the Mayo Clinic. During the Korean War, he served in the U.S. Navy as a doctor on troop transport ships and continued his Navy reserve service until he retired in 1987. In retirement, he moved to western North Carolina, where he enjoyed organic gardening, growing fruit trees, learning to play banjo and bass fiddle, and singing in the St. Philip’s Episcopal choir. He was preceded in death by two daughters. He is survived by his wife, Lillian, three children, seven grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

1950
Robert S. Jampel, former chair of the Wayne State University School of Medicine’s ophthalmology department and director of the Kresge Eye Institute, died Nov. 26, 2020. He was 94. After completing a neurology residency and an ophthalmic residency at the University of Michigan, Dr. Jampel received a doctoral degree in anatomy. He joined the State University of New York faculty in 1958 and in 1968 became a neuro-ophthalmologist at Columbia. In 1970 he joined Wayne State University and the Kresge Eye Institute, where an auditorium, an endowed chair, a lectureship, and an endowed prize in ophthalmology are named in his honor. He is survived by his wife, Joan, two sons, two daughters, and many grandchildren.

1951
Theresa (Long) Siebert, former chief of radiology at Point Pleasant Hospital in New Jersey, died Oct. 14, 2020. She was 93. She was one of only four women in her medical school class. She married her classmate, David Siebert’51. They moved to Wiesbaden, Germany, while David served in the U.S. Air Force. They settled in Manasquan, New Jersey, for 50 years. In 1969 she obtained a post at Point Pleasant Hospital and became radiology chief 10 years later. The couple volunteered on the medical staff for the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics. David Siebert died in 2008 of Alzheimer’s disease. After that, Theresa rarely spoke. She moved to Hallandale Beach, Florida, where she lived until her death. Dr. Siebert is survived by two children, two granddaughters, and three siblings.

1954
Alfred Azzoni, a surgeon who practiced at North Shore Medical Group in Long Island, died Oct. 25, 2015. He was 89. Dr. Azzoni began medical school after serving in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II and earning two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, and a Presidential Citation Ribbon. Dr. Azzoni served on the Heckscher Museum of Art Board of Directors, taught at the VA Hospital in Stonybrook, and volunteered for many organizations. He enjoyed playing and watching golf, the opera, and reading. His wife, Janet Azzoni’56, died more recently. (See notice in Class of 1956.) He is survived by three children and seven grandchildren.

John H. Hobart, who practiced urology for several decades in Easton and Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania, died Nov. 30, 2020. He was 91. He was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. After medical school, he trained at the University of Chicago and was a surgical fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. He then served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps in Landstuhl, Germany. He returned stateside to Easton Hospital, where his roles included director of surgery, chief of urology, trustee, and president of the hospital medical staff. He was also actively involved in the Northampton County Medical Society, Pennsylvania Medical Society (including a term as president), and the Pennsylvania Medical Society Liability Insurance Company. Known for his quick wit and wry humor, Dr. Hobart was an avid reader of history and enjoyed golf. He is survived by his wife, Joan, five children, and 10 grandchildren.

William T. Caldwell III, an ophthalmologist who loved the sea, died Jan. 8, 2021, at age 91. After medical school, he served in the U.S. Navy as a lieutenant in the medical corps and as a flight surgeon on the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt. He did his residency in ophthalmology at Columbia and built a private practice in Red Bank, New Jersey. Retiring in 1998, Dr. Caldwell was an avid fisherman and woodworker, building many intricate ship models and two boats: a DN iceboat, “Little Blue,” now docked in the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia, and a wooden boat, “The Betty Boop II,” on which he explored rivers, bays, and the ocean. He served as a docent at the Mariners’ Museum, loved reading, and taught himself Scottish Gaelic. He is survived by his wife, Betty Ann, two daughters, four grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and a sister. 

1955
Paul Cushman Jr., an endocrinologist, died Nov. 27, 2020. He was 90. Dr. Cushman was an early champion of methadone for the management of opiate addiction and ran a highly regarded methadone clinic in New York in the 1970s. He contributed more than 80 articles to the literature on substance-abuse medicine and worked to integrate its teaching into medical schools. In the 1980s, he taught medicine, psychiatry, pharmacology, and therapeutics at medical colleges in Wisconsin and Virginia. He wrote biographies of Dutch colonial ancestors Richard Varick, the first mayor of New York City, and silversmith William Gilbert. While a captain in the USAF in England, he met and married Paulette Bessire, and they were married for 61 years. A lover of ballet, opera, medical history, puzzles, and games, Dr. Cushman is survived by his wife, a daughter, and two grandchildren.

1956
Janet (Elderkin) Azzoni, an internist, died in her sleep on Nov. 9, 2020. She was 91. She was the Class of 1956 valedictorian. She served as a physician in Suriname and the Suffolk County School System. She was a keen investor and worked in real estate sales on Long Island. She and her husband, Alfred Azzoni’54, raised three children in Huntington, New York, before retiring to Englewood, Florida, in 1994. She enjoyed fishing and boating on the Maine coast, opera, protecting turtles for the Coastal Wildlife Club, needlepoint, and playing bridge. She was preceded in death by her husband (see notice in Class of 1954) and is survived by three children and seven grandchildren.

1957
Marcia Ann Kepler-Bilbao, a radiologist who graduated first in her class, died Jan. 1, 2021, two weeks before her 90th birthday. In 1955, she married physician Joseph Bilbao and by 1961 completed her internship and a radiology residency and had three children. She took on clinical radiological appointments in Oregon before joining the University of Utah Hospital in 1982. She was also chief radiologist at the VA Hospital in Salt Lake City. From 1989 until her retirement in 2002, she was chief radiologist at the Grand Junction VA Medical Center. Dr. Kepler-Bilbao was recognized for procedures for detecting early breast cancer and for her co-invention of the Bilbao-Dotter catheter to correct the narrowing of arteries. She was a mountain climber who surmounted 50 peaks and hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. She enjoyed dancing, meditation, yoga, reciting poems, and raising puppies. After her retirement, she volunteered for hospice and became a member of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Grand Valley. She is survived by her second husband, William, three children, four stepchildren, and two grandchildren. 

1959 
Richard Samuel Baum, one of the first board-certified neonatologists in the United States, died July 3, 2020, at age 86. Dr. Baum served as a captain in the Air Force in Japan. He later taught at Harvard and created the neonatal ICU at the Methodist hospital system in Indianapolis, Indiana. He was also medical director of the NICU at St. David’s in Austin, Texas. He settled in Denver after retirement and loved art, music, maps, and restaurants. He is survived by two children, two grandchildren, and a sister.

1961
Paul T. Wilson, a psychiatrist who practiced for 35 years in Bethesda, Maryland, died Aug. 28, 2020, after a five-month battle with COVID-19. He was 88. Dr. Wilson attended Columbia College, where he rowed crew. He trained at the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan. In addition to his private practice in Bethesda, he worked for the American Psychiatric Association and taught at Georgetown University. He contributed to making parts of “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders”—the DSM—more readable for the audience of general practitioners, medical students, and insurance companies. He was part of a committee that removed homosexuality as a pathological diagnosis from DSM-II. In 1986, Dr. Wilson published “Survival Manual” for medical students. He was predeceased in 2019 by his wife, Barbara Foley, and is survived by three children and four grandchildren.

1962
Forrest Weight Jr., an honored molecular and cellular neurobiologist at the National Institutes of Health, died unexpectedly of heart failure Nov. 14, 2020. He was 84. After medical school, he spent summers working at the NIH, where he began his long career. A year in Sweden at the University of Gothenburg led to a nearly 40-year career of researching the nervous system’s molecular and cellular physiology and pharmacology. A member of numerous professional societies, Dr. Weight traveled around the world to present his brain research. He earned the NIH Director’s Award in 1994. He sang with the Washington Oratorio Society and loved chamber music, singing, skiing, travel, and Venetian architecture. Predeceased by one son, Dr. Weight is survived by his wife, Virginia, two children, two stepchildren, 17 grandchildren, and a brother.

1963
David C. Kem, who revived the endocrinology section at the University of Oklahoma Department of Medicine, died Nov. 22, 2020. He was 83. A native of Indiana, he attended a rural school before enrolling in Earlham College. After medical school, he trained at the University of Michigan. During the Vietnam War, Dr. Kem served at the Tripler Army Hospital in Hawaii as chief of the endocrine service. After the war he was recruited to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and later joined the University of Oklahoma. The fellowship program he created produced 28 endocrinologists by the time he stepped down as section chief in 2001. He used his interest in teaching ethics to advise the Christian Medical and Dental Society and to co-found the annual A. Kurt Weiss bioethics lectureship. He enjoyed tennis, woodworking, camping, and classical music and led a Bible study fellowship. He is survived by his wife, Janet, five children, 21 grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, and two brothers.

1966
Louis “Lou” E. Hildebrand, a pathologist, died suddenly on New Year’s Day 2021 at age 80 after spending New Year’s Eve with his family. After medical school, he entered the U.S. Army, obtaining the rank of major. His specialty was pathology, but he held a family practice for a time in Stockton/Lodi, California. When he and his wife moved to Missouri, he returned to pathology, eventually retiring from Saint Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau. He was accomplished in various interests, including memorizing and reciting whole books of the Bible, organic gardening, raising prize roses, cycling, playing the piano, and writing worship songs. He also published crossword puzzles for newspapers, including the New York Times. He is survived by his wife, Fran, three daughters, five grandchildren, and two sisters.

1971
Peter Forshew Migel, a pediatrician, died Oct. 27, 2013. He was 68. While in training at what was then Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, he served as chief resident of pediatrics from 1975 to 1976. In 1976, Dr. Migel was a founding partner of Tenafly Pediatrics in Tenafly, New Jersey, where he practiced for 20 years. He was chief of pediatrics at Englewood Hospital in New Jersey from 1988 to 1990. In 1996, he began a practice specializing in developmental and behavioral pediatrics. He is survived by his wife, Terry, three children, and five grandchildren.

1976
Andrew “Andy” Glenn Israel, a general internist, died Oct. 28, 2020, after an eight-year battle with posterior cortical atrophy, a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. He was 68. He met his future wife during medical school when she visited her father, who was his patient. Dr. Israel completed his internship and residency at UC San Diego and later founded Hillcrest Internal Medicine in San Diego. He was instrumental in fundraising as a board member of the Mercy Foundation. He was voted a Top Doctor annually by his colleagues from 2004 until he retired in 2013. Skilled as a diagnostician, Dr. Israel had a case included in the “Diagnosis” column of the New York Times Magazine in 2008. He loved traveling and time with family, instilling life lessons such as “a clean car drives better” and “always use the right tool for the job.” He is survived by his wife, Dr. Sonia Ancoli, two children, four grandchildren (who knew him as “Poppa Flash”), and two sisters.

1978
Mark Steiner, who was the Harvard football team’s physician, died Dec. 17, 2020. He was 70. Born in East Lansing, Michigan, Dr. Steiner attended Harvard and played as a starting defensive lineman on its football team. After medical school, he trained at Massachusetts General Hospital. There he met his wife and became chief of the orthopedic sports medicine service at New England Baptist Hospital. He authored dozens of research papers and developed several innovative medical devices. Medicine allowed him to return to Harvard Stadium as its team physician. He was a fan of double bogey Ivy League golf, conservative politics, and sailing. His favorite place on Earth was the “cove” on Glen Lake in Michigan. Dr. Steiner was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy in 2017. He is survived by his wife, Dr. Mary Ellen McCann, three children, three grandchildren, and two siblings.

1986
Fred M. Carter II, an orthopedic surgeon, died unexpectedly Nov. 19, 2020. He was 60. He trained at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. He also completed a fellowship in sports medicine at the Emory Orthopaedic and Spine Center and an orthopedic research fellowship at the George L. Schultz Laboratories for Orthopaedic Research. Dr. Carter’s career began on his native Long Island at South Shore Orthopedic Associates. In 2001, he and his family moved to the North Fork, where he established North Fork Orthopedic & Sports Medicine. He was a storyteller, a soccer coach, and a fishing enthusiast who delighted in gathering his family together to watch live college sports at his children’s alma maters. Dr. Carter is survived by his wife, Martha, and three children.

2013
Lauren Brinkerhoff, an anesthesiologist, died Aug. 16, 2020, from a respiratory illness complication. She was 35. Dr. Brinkerhoff graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University in 2006 with a degree in biological sciences. After completing a dual MD/MPH from Columbia, she began a residency at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. She had an immense desire to improve the quality of life for those around her. While in Rochester, she discovered an interest in medical technology innovations, worked as a special projects consultant, and contributed to the formation of several startup companies.