Tennant S. McWilliams, PhD [1943-2023]

I wanted to note the passing on October 23 of UAB Professor Emeritus and historian Tennant S. McWilliams, who served as Dean of the School of Social Behavior and Sciences from 1990 until 2007. He graduated from Birmingham-Southern in 1965, then earned a master's at the University of Alabama in 1967 and a PhD from the University of Georgia in 1973. The following year he began his career at UAB, which lasted until retirement in 2010. During those years he had not only served as a dean, but in several other administrative posts at the university. 

He published several books; three of them are noted below. I've found the UAB history very useful.  

Published by the University of Alabama Press in September 2023

University of Alabama Press, 2008

University of Alabama Press, 1978

This pamphlet was published in 1978.

• Hannis Taylor: New Southerner as American. University of Alabama Press, 1978.
• The New South Faces the World: Foreign Affairs and the Southern Sense of Self. Louisiana State University Press, 1988. Paperback 2006.
• New Lights in the Valley: The Emergence of UAB. University of Alabama Press, 2008.
• The Chaplain’s Conflict: Good and Evil in a War Hospital. Texas A&M University Press, 2012.
• Dixie Heretic: The Civil Rights Odyssey of Renwick C. Kennedy. Forthcoming. University of Alabama Press, 2023.

UAB Paintings at the Hilton Hotel

Recently I happened to visit the Hilton Hotel just off the UAB campus below Five Points. In the lobby are the two paintings below which depict fanciful views of iconic UAB buildings and scenes. 

I found it appropriate that in one painting a crane towers over the landscape. When I began working at UAB in 1983, I remarked to someone that a lot of construction was taking place on campus. He said to get used to it, it never stops. And the building continued until I retired in 2015 and based on my regular visits to campus since construction goes on unabated.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find information on the artist. If you can provide any, leave it in the comments! 

Source: Hilton Hotel website

UAB Football in 1991 & 1992

On the way to its recent success the UAB football program has had some ups and downs. The Wikipedia entry will give you the basic facts. This blog post looks back at the team's two years at the NCAA Division III level in 1991 and 1992. Why am I doing that? Well, in some recent cleaning out I came across the two flyers and a ticket stub included below.

The program began with two years of club football in 1989 and 1990. In 1991 the university upgraded the program to Division III and Jim Hilyer was hired as head coach beginning that fall. He led the team for two years in Division III and two in I-AA; Watson Brown became head coach in 1995. 

Hilyer had played four years as offensive guard and linebacker at Stetson University. He was an assistant coach at the pro and college level for Mississippi State and Auburn [twice!] and the Washington Redskins and Birmingham Stallions. At UAB, his only head coaching post, he had a record of 27-12-2. Hilyer passed away in January of this year. 

My son Amos and I saw a couple of UAB's games in those Division III days. As you can see from the ticket stub below, we attended the October 12, 1991, contest with Lindenwood University played at Legion Field. Lindenwood, located in St. Charles, Missouri, had just begun football the previous year and played as an independent until 1996 when they joined the NAIA. The team began playing in the NCAA in 2012. The game ended in a 17-17 tie. UAB finished that first season with a 4-3-2 record; you can see the scores here. 

I've yet to find any ticket stub in my vast collection, but we also attended a game during the 1992 season. The opponent was Gallaudet University and the September 12 game was played at Lawson Field. We were among the crowd of more than 5300 people who watched UAB win 44-6. The Blazers finished that season with a 7-3 record. 

The game had an extra dimension not often seen--or heard--at football games. Gallaudet is a private school in Washington, D.C., that serves deaf and hard of hearing students. At the game we attended, a big drum on the sidelines sent signals to the team on the field. 

Gallaudet has been playing football since 1883. Interestingly, the huddle originated at the school. In the 1890's quarterback Paul D. Hubbard came up with the idea as a way to hide hand signals from opposing teams. 

Amos and I attended this Blazer win over Gallaudet played at Lawson Field. 

These buildings, now demolished, served as UAB football administrative offices for many years. 

Cardiology & Cardiovascular Surgery: Intersections in Alabama

Today I'm posting a piece by a guest author, Dr. James Boogaerts of the UAB School of Medicine. He discusses the way in which the specialties of cardiology and cardiovascular surgery came to the state-specifically at what is now the UAB Heersink School of Medicine-after World War II.

A more detailed look at some of this history can be found in 

Holman WL, Deas DS Jr, Kirklin JK. Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB): A Legacy of Innovation, Education, and Contributions. Semin Thorac Cardiovasc Surg. 2020 Winter;32(4):606-616

A good overview of the state's medical history is Howard Holley's 1983 book, A History of Medicine in Alabama. 

I would like to thank Dr. Boogaerts for allowing me to add his piece to AlabamaYesterdays. I have added a few images and notes at the end. 

Much of Alabama's medical history is poorly documented. I've written quite a few related posts on this blog; you can find links to some of them here. 

History of Cardiology and Cardiovascular Surgery

-  Intersections in Alabama -

James Boogaerts, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
UAB Division of Cardiovascular Disease

Received his Ph.D. & M.D. from LSU Medical Center in New Orleans, completed his residency and a cardiology fellowship at UAB 1984-90

  

     Dr. John Burrett, first cardiologist in Alabama, arrived in Birmingham in 1946. Dr. Burrett had lived on East 88_th Street in Manhattan when he graduated in 1937 from New York Medical College, where his father was dean. He subsequently moved to Boston and worked in the physiology lab of Dr. Walter B. Cannon at Harvard, then trained as a cardiology fellow with Dr. Paul Dudley White, who had begun the first cardiology service in the U.S., at the Massachusetts  General Hospital, in 1916.  Dr. Burrett and Dr. White co-published a research article on congenital heart disease in 1945.

 

John Burrett 

Paul Dudley White           

 

     One question regarding the John Burrett story is why an established physician from the Northeast would move to the South in the mid-40s and join the faculty of the Medical College of Alabama, which had moved in 1945 from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham.  The facts are that Dr. Burrett had met Dr. Joseph Donald, an Alabama surgeon, during his military service and he had met and married a nurse, Clara Bray, who was training in Manhattan.  Her home was in Orlando, Florida, but her extended family was from Georgia.

 

Tinsley Harrison

Al Blalock

Vivien Thomas 

     Tinsley Harrison came to UAB in 1950.  His roommate and close friend during med school and residency at Johns Hopkins (in the 1920s) was Alfred Blalock, who performed the first-ever elective cardiovascular surgery on November 29, 1944, with VivienThomas talking him through the operative procedure.  Two decades later, Levi Watkins - by happenstance - followed the pathway of Vivien Thomas to Vanderbilt and later to Johns Hopkins. Levi Watkins enrolled in Vanderbilt School of Medicine in 1966 and then moved through Johns Hopkins as a surgical resident and joined the faculty at Hopkins as a cardiac surgeon.     

   

Dr. Levi Watkins

Luther Hill

Michael DeBakey

John W. Kirklin

 Earlier, Luther Hill had performed the first successful emergency cardiac surgery in the U.S. - in Montgomery, Alabama in 1902 - when he sutured the heart of patient with a penetrating stab wound.  Michael DeBakey, while a medical student at Tulane in New Orleans, pioneered use of the roller pump for blood transfusions in the 1930s; the roller pump was later used in the first heart-lung bypass machine in 1953.  In 1955, while at Mayo Clinic, significant improvements were made by John Kirklin and his team.  Kirklin was recruited to UAB in Birmingham in 1966.

Dr. Andreas Gruentzig 

     Andreas Gruentzig arrived at Emory School of Medicine in Atlanta in 1980.  One of his cardiology fellows was Gary Roubin.  While on faculty at Emory, Roubin pioneered development of the intracoronary stent.  He came to UAB in 1989.

Dr. Gary Roubin      

 

      Contributions of physicians working in Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Georgia - Luther Hill, Tinsley Harrison, Michael Debakey, Al Blalock, Vivien Thomas, John Kirklin, Levi Watkins, Andreas Gruentzig, and Gary Roubin - are thus connected to both early and recent pivotal events in cardiology and cardiovascular surgery.

 

See   *pump*  and   *balloon*  and   *stent*  pages

Article by Burrett, White and others published in the July 1942 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation while Burrett worked in White's lab in Boston. 

After he joined the Medical College of Alabama faculty in 1946, Dr. Burrett published a few articles in his area of expertise. two of them are listed below. The one above appeared in the October 1947 Jefferson-Hillman Hospital Bulletin and had a different format. As noted on the first page above, he reviewed the "so-called orthodox therapy" on myocardial infarction [heart attack]. His talk at the house staff bi-monthly seminar was followed by extensive discussion of his remarks.  

1: BURRETT JB, KAHN SS. Incidence of a very slow ventricular rate in a young adult with A-V block and Stokes-Adams attacks. Jefferson-Hillman Hosp Bull. 1947 Jul;1(3):56-64. PMID: 20252035.

2: BURRETT JB. Nonsurgical congenital heart disease. J Med Assoc State Ala. 1950 Sep;20(3):79-81. PMID: 15437143

 

UAB Tears Down the Kracke Building

Well, it wasn't Tim Riley's bar, but the Kracke Building on the UAB campus at 1922 7th Avenue South across from the dental school had quite a history just the same. The structure opened in 1929 as the dormitory for nursing students at the Hillman Hospital next door and operated as such until 1963. In July 1965 the building reopened as the Roy R. Kracke Clinical Services Building, named in honor of Dr. Roy Kracke, the first Dean of the Medical College of Alabama. Various clinics and offices were located there over the years. I think Kracke was the third oldest building on campus, behind only Old and New Hillman. 

I worked in this building for a decade. In 1983 I was hired as librarian by the medical school's Anesthesiology Department. At that time the library and the department's administrative and many faculty offices were located on the fifth floor of Kracke. In 1993 those offices and the library were relocated to the ninth floor of Jefferson Tower, which opened in 1939 as Jefferson Hospital. There I remained until retirement in December 2015.

So what are UAB's plans for this space? The Lyons-Harrison Research Building next to both Kracke and Jefferson Tower will be transformed into the Altec Styslinger Genomic Medicine and Data Sciences Building. You can see renderings of that future structure here. 

You can read one of my blog posts about past demolitions at UAB here. 

More comments are below some of the photos. 

A contemporary photo of the Kracke Building with the Pittman Center for Advanced Medical Studies [CAMS] building in the foreground and Jefferson Tower in the background. CAMS has also been demolished; it was the original home of the medical history collection donated in 1958 by Lawrence Reynolds, M.D.  

Dr. James A. Pittman [1927-2014] was Dean of the Medical School from 1973 until 1992, a period of tremendous growth for UAB and its biomedical sector. I had some interesting conversations with him over the years about medical and UAB history. 

Photo by Hanno Van Der Bul 9 March 2021

Source: Birmingham Business Journal

Kracke Clinical Services Building in the 1960's 

Source: UAB Archives via UAB Reporter

Roy Kracke, M.D. in 1945

Kracke was appointed Dean of the Medical College of Alabama in that year, when classes began in September in Birmingham. Previously a two-year school had operated in Tuscaloosa since 1920, after many years in mobile after its founding 1859. The state expanded the curriculum so that students did not have to leave Alabama to finish their M.D. Birmingham was chosen as the new site for its large pool of patients. 

Source: BhamWiki

Nursing students in the dormitory

Source for photo above & below: UAB Archives via UAB Reporter

These photos show the interior of the Kracke Building when it opened in July 1965 and give floor-by-floor descriptions.

I arrived late to the party, so the Kracke Building was mostly a pile of rubble when I was there on November 1. Demolition began October 9. 

In this photo you can see the Lyons-Harrison Building logo on the lower left. This structure began as the Health Sciences Research Building with a phased opening in October 1959 and fully occupied in May 1960. In November 1966 it was renamed after Dr. Champ Lyons, Chair of the Department of Surgery from 1950 until 1965, and another prominent physician, Tinsley Harrison. Among his many other achievements, Harrison wrote the standard Principles of Internal Medicine, first published in 1950 and now in its 20th edition. 

The back of Jefferson Tower, originally Jefferson Hospital which opened in 1939, is visible in this photo.

Here we can see Jefferson Tower and on the right what is now the New Hillman Building, the front of which is seen below with the statue of William Davis, M.D., an important figure in Alabama and Birmingham medical history.