In Memoriam

Rex B. Conn Jr. M.D. ’53, died of Parkinson disease on March 2 in Philadelphia. He was 80. Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Conn taught at West Virginia University in Morgantown, where he established the pathology department and clinical laboratory. He served as a radar specialist in the Navy Reserve during World War II. Conn was subsequently named to advisory committees at the National Institutes of Health, Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. From 1968 to 1977 he taught at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Conn ran clinical labs both there and at Emory University, where he also taught. In 1987 he moved to Philadelphia, where he taught at Thomas Jefferson Medical College until his retirement in 2003.

Alfred Robert Cordell, M.D., H.S. ’50, died on April 9 in Winston- Salem, N.C. He was 83. After receiving his medical degree and completing an internship at Johns Hopkins University, Cordell came to the Yale VA Surgical Services for an assistant residency in surgery from 1948 to 1950. Following a stint as a surgeon with the Medical Corps, U.S. Navy Reserve, training in general and thoracic surgery at Wake Forest University, and a year as a visiting instructor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Buffalo, he returned in 1970 to Wake Forest, where he became a professor of surgery. From 1979 to 1991 he served as the Howard Holt Bradshaw Professor of Surgery and chair of Wake Forest’s Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery. Cordell developed techniques in myocardial preservation and blood conservation and established an open-heart program at Wake Forest’s Baptist Medical Center. He served on the board of governors of the American College of Surgeons from 1983 to 1989. In September 1995, he was named professor emeritus at Wake Forest; the A. Robert Cordell Chair in Cardiothoracic Surgery was established in his honor.

Roger W. Davis Jr., M.D. ’43, died on March 16 in Springfield, Vt. He was 90. After graduation from medical school, Davis completed internships at Hartford Hospital in 1943 and 1946. From 1944 to 1946 he served with the U.S. Army’s 174th Engineer Combat Battalion. He completed residencies in orthopaedic surgery at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City from 1947 to 1949 and at Boston City Hospital in 1950. He opened a private practice in orthopaedic surgery in Hartford and worked as assistant medical director of the Aetna Life and Casualty Co. From 1974 until his retirement in 1981, he served as a part-time physician in Springfield Hospital’s emergency room.

D. Joseph Demis, Ph.D., M.D. ’57, died on March 8 in Clifton Park, N.Y. He was 78. After interning in Seattle, Demis took a fellowship in biochemistry at Oxford University. There he explained the biosynthetic pathway of adrenaline in mammalian tissue and performed pioneering studies that showed the effectiveness of antimetabolites as treatment for psoriasis and similar skin conditions. He received further training in dermatology at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C. His interest in tropical diseases, and especially pinta, a bacterial skin disease endemic to Central and South America, led him to the U.S. Public Health Service. Working with the Brazilian government, Demis helped to eliminate pinta in that country. Demis subsequently served as professor and chair of dermatology at Washington University in St. Louis from 1964 to 1966; at that time he was the youngest chair of a major dermatology department in the United States. After accepting an appointment as professor and chair of dermatology at Albany Medical College, he collaborated to produce the text Clinical Dermatology. He also maintained a private dermatology practice.

Frederick James Finseth, M.D., died in February in San Francisco. He was 67. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Finseth completed a residency in surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. He was assistant professor in reconstructive and plastic surgery at the School of Medicine from 1974 to 1977. He published several papers on the impairment of blood flow in the hand from cigarette smoking during his years at Yale. From 1977 to 1979 Finseth was an assistant professor in plastic and reconstructive surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine, specializing in reconstructive surgery of the hand. He traveled widely and made annual trips to teach at Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, India. He also taught in South America, Singapore, China and South Asia.

Steven C. Hebert, M.D., chair and C.N.H. Long Professor of Cellular and Molecular Physiology and professor of medicine, died of cardiovascular disease in New Haven on April 15. He was 61. Hebert was a board-certified nephrologist who devoted his career to the science of renal fluid and electrolyte regulation. He made major contributions to medicine, notably in the cloning of genes that mediate or regulate the transport of sodium, potassium and calcium across cell membranes. His work won him election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005, and his research was the basis for a new class of drugs used to treat hyperparathyroidism, a hormonal disorder that affects many of the more than 1 million patients worldwide with end-stage kidney disease. Hebert was born in 1946 in Rockford, Ill., and lived for part of his childhood on the island of Great Inagua in the Bahamas, where his father was a contractor for the Morton Salt Co. In a profile published in 2006 in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, he recalled watching bulldozers pile dried sea salt into mountains 150 feet high and speculated that his interest in metabolic salts may have had its genesis there. He entered Florida State University at age 15 and graduated after three years. Hebert received his medical degree from the University of Florida in 1970. Following training in internal medicine and nephrology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), he served on the faculty at UAB, Eastern Virginia Medical School, the University of Texas Medical School in Houston, Harvard Medical School, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. In 1997 he joined Vanderbilt University as director of the Division of Nephrology and the Ann and Roscoe R. Robinson Professor of Medicine. In 2000 he was offered the chair at Yale, which gave him the opportunity to lead a world-class department and continue his close collaboration with Gerhard Giebisch, M.D., a longtime friend and mentor. In the early 1990s, Hebert’s laboratory made three fundamental discoveries about the kidney’s processing of potassium, sodium and calcium. His group identified a channel that regulates potassium excretion and is involved in Bartter syndrome type II, an inherited disorder that causes loss of sodium and potassium through the urine. He and his colleagues also identified two sodium chloride transporters that are target sites for important diuretic drugs. His subsequent discovery of a calcium-sensing receptor known as CASR led to the development of a new class of drugs that modulate calcium-receptor activity. Most recently, with John Geibel, M.D., D.Sc., Hebert demonstrated in an animal model that diarrhea could be reversed almost immediately by activating the CASR receptor. Such treatment would have a major impact on health problems in developing countries, where diarrheal disease kills some 3 million infants and children each year. Hebert was awarded numerous professional honors, including the Homer W. Smith Award from the American Society of Nephrology, the A.N. Richards Award from the International Society of Nephrology, and the Carl W. Gottschalk Distinguished Lectureship from the American Society of Physiology.

Virginia H. Hulbert, R.N., M.P.H. ’50, died on January 31 in Ansonia, Conn. She was 97. After earning her degree in nursing, Hulbert worked for more than 30 years as an assistant professor of health at Southern Connecticut State University, and as head nurse in the school’s student health department.

D. Frank Johnson Jr., M.D. ’55, died on March 31. He was 78. After completing his internship, Johnson joined the Air Force as a flight surgeon. Following a residency in internal medicine at Minneapolis General Hospital, in 1961 he pursued a career in Billings, Mont. For 25 years he was the continuing medical education director for St. Vincent Hospital, where he founded and directed Montana’s first cardiac rehabilitation program. He also helped to develop St. Vincent’s ICU, its weight control program and its Lifecare outpatient clinic. He was an associate clinical professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. Later in his career he focused on weight management, directing clinics in Billings, Helena and Bozeman, Mont., while continuing to serve airline pilots in the state as a senior aeromedical examiner designated by the Federal Aviation Administration. He was a member of the North American Society for the Study of Obesity. Among other honors, Johnson received the American Society of Bariatric Physicians’ Bariatrician of the Year award in 2002.

Vincent J. Longo, M.D. ’46, died on February 18 in Niantic, Conn. He was 85. During World War II, Longo was a member of the Army Specialized Training Program and received a commission as first lieutenant. Following an internship in surgery, gynecology and obstetrics, and a fellowship in urology, he began a urology practice in New London, Conn., in 1952. He joined the staff of Lawrence and Memorial Hospital in New London and served as chief of urology there from 1976 until his retirement in 1986. Longo was a member of the American Board of Urology, a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and a certified sex educator and therapist with the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists. After retiring he served with Charles Pfizer Pharmaceuticals as principal clinical investigator in the Viagra program.

Gordon V.K. Reid, M.D., H.S. ’69, died on April 15. He was 72. After receiving his medical degree from the University of Rochester and further training at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, Reid served as U.S. Public Health Service lieutenant commander in the Epidemic Intelligence Service of the Centers for Disease Control and was sent to India to do smallpox eradication. In 1968 he came to Yale to finish his training in internal medicine, endocrinology and gerontology. Shortly after joining a New Haven practice in 1970, he co-founded the Community Health Care Plan, where he practiced until 1999. He then co-founded Endocrine Associates of Connecticut. Reid was an associate clinical professor of medicine at Yale, attending in internal medicine and endocrinology, and a preceptor for residents from Yale-New Haven Hospital and the Hospital of Saint Raphael.

Galon S. Rodabaugh, M.D., H.S. ’53, died on January 9. He was 95. Rodabaugh completed his medical degree and internship at Ohio State University in 1939; practiced for several years in Basil, Ohio; and served from 1942 to 1945 as a captain with the U.S. Army Medical Corps in England, France, Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg and Germany. He saw combat during in the Battle of the Bulge and received two Bronze Stars. After completing a residency at Yale in 1953, he served as anesthesiologist at the Fairfield Medical Center in Lancaster, Ohio, until his retirement in 1984.

William G. Wysor Jr., M.D., H.S. ’52, died on January 3 in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 81. After receiving his medical degree from the University of Virginia, Wysor received post-graduate training at Yale and the Medical College of Virginia. In 1953 he entered private practice in South Boston, Va. From 1957 to 1969 he served as associate professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine. From 1969 until his retirement in 1990, he practiced with Durham Internal Medical Associates. His honors included teaching awards from Escola Paulista de Medicina in São Paulo, Brazil, where he was a visiting professor, and from the UNC School of Medicine.

Send obituary notices to Claire M. Bessinger, Yale Medicine Publications, 1 Church Street, Suite 300, New Haven, CT 06510, or via e-mail to claire.bessinger@yale.edu