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USF College of Medicine's First 25 Years

By Leland Hawes
Tampa Tribune Staff Writer
November 13, 1995

Tampa - Civic clout helped the University of South Florida land a medical school. A wild, four-hour race up Interstate 75 - from Tampa to Tallahassee - proved crucial in the creation of University of South Florida's College of Medicine, now celebrating its 25th anniversary.

This event occurred Nov. 28, 1972, shortly after the founding dean, Dr. Donn L. Smith, learned that expected federal funding for a second-phase clinic and teaching building had fallen through.

"All our aspirations seemed to blow up," recalled Dr. Roy Behnke, then chief of medicine. Suddenly, it became obvious state money would have to fill the gap.

Fortunately for the just-emerging medical school, the "stars" were in the right positions for Tampa-area projects in the Florida Legislature. Terrell Sessums had just been sworn in as speaker of the House of Representatives, and Louis de la Parte was president pro tempore of the Senate.

Coincidentally, Gov. Reubin Askew called Sessums to tell him of the necessity for a special legislative session. There were a number of pressing issues to deal with - including an emergency need to make up a $20 million shortfall.

Sessums recalled, "I told the governor I was sympathetic to his request, but we also had another emergency." USF lacked $9.5 million to complete the essential complex.

With Sessums lobbying in the House and de la Parte in the Senate, prospects looked good in the special session. But about 1 p.m. on the day the appropriation would be considered, a call came through to Dean Smith in Tampa.

He was told he should be in Tallahassee by 5 p.m. to explain the project.

Smith already had a reputation as a "lean and mean" budgeter who had learned a lot of credibility, Sessums said.

Somehow, Smith and business manager John Melendi managed to careen into the capitol at the crucial moment - bringing a model of the planned medical complex.

They undoubtedly exceeded speed limits for the 235-mile trip. But they convinced legislators the money would be well spent. Both houses approved the fund request that day.

Shared stories
The "race up I-75" was one of many stories recounted recently when the college conferred honorary degrees upon Sessums and de la Parte and formally marked its 25th anniversary.

Many of those stories are contained in a slick commemorative book titled "Sparkling With Promise." The phrase came from a Tampa Tribune editorial written by the late James A. Clendinen during the long struggle for a medical school.

The book, written by Connie A. Jonas, was in the works five years. The college's public affairs director, William Bulger, started gathering historical material for its 20th anniversary but felt it could be augmented in book form for the 25th.

Jonas, who lives in Chicago, interviewed in person and by telephone. And she made use of extensive research by USF graduate student Michael Mundt.

Her chronology dates to the founding of USF itself, when local supporters expressed hopes a medical school could be part of the regional university here.

But not until 1963, when the U.S. Health Professions Educational Assistance Act provided money for medical college buildings, did solid movement get under way.

What happened was a classic case of the way Hillsborough County's civic leadership - when unified and motivated - could pack a potent punch.

U.S. Rep. Sam Gibbons of Tampa, in his first term in Congress, alerted local movers and shakers in the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce that they'd better start stirring.

In April 1964 chamber President Clewis Howell appointed a special medical school committee to aim for a federal grant - and its members carried clout. They were:

T. Paine Kelly Jr., president of the chamber's Committee of 100; Dr. Richard G. Connar; editor Clendinen of the Tribune; Rep. Sessums; state Sen. Tom Whitaker Jr.; Dean Charles Millican of USF's College of Business; attorney John Germany; banker Hamilton Hunt; and certified public accountant Harry E. Hurst.

Before long, the chamber sent a $25,000 check to USF President John Allen to pay for a feasibility study.

Another favorable development: Congressman Gibbons was ramrodding a new Veterans Administration hospital on land adjacent to the USF campus. The medical school would be a significant factor in its location, since students would assist in caring for patients.

But Hillsborough's legislative delegation faced an uphill battle simply to pass an authorization bill. Although Sessums had 33 co-signers on a proposed bill, it was stalled in a committee.

In the senate, a peripheral squabble had the bill bottled up in a "killer" committee.

It took plenty of wheeling and dealing before the first medical school authorization bill cleared both chambers. Gov. Haydon Burns signed the bill June 23, 1965.

Looking for money
Even though the medical/nursing school had been endorsed in principle, and though federal funds would finance a portion, there was still no state money to build it.

Author Jonas compared the ups and downs of the funding campaign to Busch Gardens' latter-day Kumba ride. She quotes Gibbons as saying, "You're going to have to 'horse it through' the legislature."

State Rep. Richard Hodes warned, "It's going to have be secured by horse-trading." So, more negotiations and vote swaps took place in the 1967 session.

Although the federal government would fund $14 million of the anticipated $21 million cost, the state contribution would make or break the project.

Eventually the university had to give up the 400-bed teaching hospital that was part of the original proposal. USF opted instead to look to existing area hospitals as learning facilities for its students.

The 1967 legislature finally came through with #\$3 million, enabling construction to get under way. That's when Tribune editor Clendinen called it "A Medical Victory" and asserted:

"It is a project that sparkles with promise of benefits, both medical and economic for the Tampa area."

Meanwhile, the Veterans Administration confirmed it would put up a hospital of its own, across 30th Street.

The acting USF dean, Dr. Alfred H. Lawton, asserted, "This will be an open medical school. Tampa General, St. Joseph's and the other local hospitals will be the 'university' hospitals. Doctors in our community will be the professors."

But the author Jonas said the "open medical school" concept "seemed just a little too loosely organized for the [U.S. Department of] Health, Education and Welfare taste." A revised application was requested.

Dr. Lawton had resigned as acting dean by then, and the search led to Dr. Donn L. Smith, who had just built a medical school at the University of Louisville. He would prove to be the most significant figure in the college's first quarter-century.

Smith, who died in September of a heart attack while attending an alumni gathering in Orlando, was a blunt, no-nonsense administrator.

"He had a remarkable ability to assess what things were going to cost," his friend Roy Behnke, said.

Former Board of Control Chancellor Robert Mautz told a 25th anniversary audience that Smith's budgets always seemed modest compared with others he encountered. And the building projects he oversaw came in amazingly under budget.

Yet the dean had a human touch.

"He was absolutely devoted to his students," said Dr. Martin Silbiger, now the vice president for health services and interim dean of the medical school.

Smith first had to recruit faculty to provide the basics for the first 25 students who began classes in 1970 in a cordoned-off corner of a laboratory. And Tampa doctors such as Dr. James Ingram pitched in early to teach.

Dr. Behnke noted that, in his first year, when he recruited doctor-instructors for the department of internal medicine, they had to be forewarned of an expected duty.

Because there was no house staff yet at the VA hospital then, the faculty members had to fill in one night weekly at the hospital to take night calls. Behnke performed the night duty, too, until a residency program got under way.

In her book, Jonas relates how the groundbreaking for the first med-school building took place in March 1972 at dawn, with "no press, no publicity, no speeches, no politicians or prominent citizens."

Dean Smith just turned a shovel of dirt. Business manager Melendi managed to catch the scene with his camera after turning on his car's headlights for illumination.

There were more building projects to come, more political battles to fight and more changes in medical education to come through its first quarter=century in vibrant strength.

The Health Sciences Center, of which the college is part, is estimated to bring in $178.5 million to the Tampa area every year, generating nearly 6,400 jobs.

More importantly, as Jonas points out:

"In its first 25 years, at a comparatively low cost, the College of Medicine has poured 1,600 graduates into the community to lend their talents to patient care, research and medical education."

Re-printed with permission.

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