ACS Bulletin - April 2016

52 |

John Earle “Jack” Connolly, MD, FACS, Past-Second Vice-President and Vice-Chair of the Board of Regents of the American College of Surgeons (ACS), passed away peacefully surrounded by his family on January 20 at 92 years old. A pioneering cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr. Connolly was the founding chairman, department of surgery, University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine).

Outstanding mentors

Jack was born May 21, 1923, in Omaha, NE, where his father, Earle Connolly, MD, was a surgeon on the faculty of Creighton University’s School of Medicine. The elder Dr. Connolly and Jack’s mother, Gertrude, created an environment that encouraged scholastic excellence.

Dr. Earle Connolly often took Jack along on weekend rounds to share his passion for academic surgery.

These parental influences were evident as Dr. Jack Connolly went on to graduate with honors from Harvard College, Cambridge, MA, in 1945 and Harvard Medical School, Boston, in 1948.

Dr. Connolly then left New England for the fast-paced life of post-World War II California to begin training in surgery at the Stanford University Hospital, San Francisco, where Emile Holman, MD, FACS, was chief of surgery. Dr. Holman, the last resident to train under William S. Halsted, MD, FACS, was an expert in arteriovenous fistula physiology and management.

Dr. Connolly’s residency at Stanford included a penultimate year as a surgical registrar on Sir James Patterson Ross’ professorial unit at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, U.K.

After completing a final year as chief resident at Stanford, Jack returned to the East Coast in

1955 for a two-year thoracic and cardiovascular surgery residency at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, New York, N Y. At that time, the emphasis of the program was substantially more thoracic than cardiac, with George H.

Humphreys II, MD, FACS, and Robert H. Wylie, Jr., MD, FACS, at the medical center and J. Maxwell Chamberlain, MD, FACS, at Roosevelt and Bellevue hospitals.

Trailblazing career

By the time Dr. Connolly returned to Stanford in 1957 as an instructor in surgery, Frank L.A. Gerbode, MD, FACS, FRCS, had performed the first open heart operation on the West Coast in 1954 and had a well-established cardiac team. Norman E. Shumway, MD, FACS, had just come to Stanford directly from training at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, with Richard L. Varco, MD, FACS, and C. Walton Lillehei, MD, FACS, who were in the vanguard of this rapidly developing field.

Jack decided to focus his efforts on clinical research and was awarded funding as a Markle Scholar from 1957 to 1962. The return on this investment included 37 reports in peer-reviewed publications, ranging from “Direct vision surgery of acquired aortic and mitral valvular stenosis under hypothermia” in Surgery to “Intestinal adhesions— present status of prevention and treatment” in California Medicine.