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VOLUME 20, NUMBER 36
SEPTEMBER?, 1973
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA
Tribute to Thomas L Perkins
A Devoted Friend of the Medical Center
One of the major supportive forces
behind the Duke University Medical
Center in its climb to the position it holds
in academic medicine today was a man
who didn't have an M.D.
Nor was he a graduate of Duke.
in fact, he spent relatively little time
here.
Yet his influence on the growth and
course of the medical center was summed
up this way by Dr. Bames Woodhall:
"There is no question but that the
turning point for the medical center was
the long-range planning and development
that he insisted on."
The man was Thomas L. Perkins, who
died in a hospital near his Rye, N.Y.,
home on June 21. Misdirect influence on
Duke University and the Duke University
Medical Center came from two
directions—he had been a member of the
University Board of Trustees since 1958,
and he had been a trustee of the Duke
Endowment since 1948, serving as
chairman since 1960.
But some of the factors that
influenced Mr. Perkins' fondness for
Duke went back to the generation that
proceeded him.
His father was William R. Perkins, for
whom Perkins Library is named and who
may have been the person closest to
James B. Duke outside his own family.
JOHN M.STRIBLING
The elder Perkins was Mr. Duke's
personal attorney and legal advisor for
the trust indenture which established the
Duke Endowment and made possible the
establishment of Duke University and the .
Duke Medical Center. He was a member
of the Endowment's Duke University
Building Committee.
In his book The Duke University
Medical Center, the late Dr. W. C.
Davison, the first dean of medicine, listed
William R. and Thomas L. Perkins among
those to receive "the credit for whatever
has been accomplished by the faculty and
students of the Duke University Medical
Center..."
They were among those, Davison
wrote, "who started this medical program
and were determined that it should be the
best, not only 'between Baltimore and
New Orleans,' to quote Mr.'Duke, but In
the nation."
Besides the general interest in Duke he
received from his father, who died in
1945, Tom Perkins acquired something
else as well—his father's determination
that Mr. Duke's wishes be fulfilled.
This point was recalled by Dr. Deryl
Hart, who was chairman of the
Department of Surgery from 1929-60 and
then served for three years as president of
the university.
"Tom Perkins was vitally interested in
the university's developing as Mr. Duke
wanted it developed, and that included
the medical center." As chairman of the
Duke Endowment trustees, Mr. Perkins
was firm in his resolve of what should be
done, he was extremely fair "and looked
favorably on our requests from the medical
center," Dr. Hart said.
"Someone told me early," Hart
recalled, "that when you deal with Tom
Perkins, there's no playing around."
But Hart found that when it came to
administering the university, Perkins
looked to the president.
"He told me on several occasions, 'The
president of Duke University runs Duke
University,'" Hart said, "and he made it
clear that if any requests or
recommendations were to be made to the
Endowment trustees, they were to come
through the president if we expected any
action on them.
"He gave you the incentive for
initiative and to make proposals, and if
they were reasonable proposals, he would
support them," Hart said.
In the years that Dr. Hart was
president, 1960-63, the second generation
of leadership was coming on at the
medical center following the retirement
in 1960 of Dr. Davison.
Davison's immediate successor as dean
New Adminisfrative Positions
Go to Sinbling and Schwartz
MICHAEL J. SCHWARTZ
John (Mac) Stribling and Michael J.
Schwartz have been promoted to assistant
administrative directors of the hospital.
Stribling has been unit administrator
of the operating rooms, the Acute Care
Unit, the recovery room and the laundry
since 1970.
Schwartz has been unit administrator
for pediatrics and obstetrics-gynecology
wards since 1971.
Announcement of the promotions was
made by Richard H. Peck, administrative
director of the hospital. "I'm pleased to
make this announcement," Peck said,
"because these two men are very capable
people, and they've consistently
demonstrated their capabilities from the
day they came to the hospital."
Stribling will retain his present duties.
Schwartz will assume responsibility for
the print shop, public safety, public
relations information services, the Heart
Station and the EEG Laboratory in
addition to his present duties.
Stribling is a native of Ninety Six,
S.C., and a 1962 graduate of Lander
College with a degree in business
administration. Before coming to Duke as
a unit administrator, he worked as a store
manager for Sears Roebuck, Inc., a
training coordinator for the Monsanto
Corporation and an assistant production
manager with the Roxboro
Manufacturing Co.
Since coming to Duke, Stribling has
participated in the Health Administration
Management Improvement Program
(HAMIP), which provides additional
training to men and women already
engaged in hospital administration.
Stribling said he became interested in
hospitals while working at Greenville
General Hospital in Greenville, S.C.
during his college years and he has
"enjoyed it more than anything I've ever
done."
He and his wife Delaina have three
young daughters — Lynette, Donna
Carole and Dyanne.
Schwartz, who is from Youngstown,
Ohio, is a 1963 graduate of the Virginia
Military Institute. In 1971 he received a
master's degree in hospital
administration. After undergraduate
work, he was a research assistant in
biochemistry at the State University of
New York ,and served as a captain in the
U.S. Army in Vietnam where he was
awarded a bronze star.
In the summer of 1970 he was sent to
England by the Duke Endowment with a
group of hospital administrators and
medical students as a part of the King's
Fund College of Hospital Management to
study the British health care system.
Schwartz said he is currently engaged
in revising the SEDO directional sign
system "so that it's better understood
and used more readily."
He and his wife Phyllis have an
18-month-old daughter named Suzanne.
THOMAS L PERKINS
was Dr. Barnes Woodhall, who said of
Perkins that "he was devoted to Duke
University and particularly devoted to the
medical center. That doesn't mean that
everybody agreed with him at all times,
but no one could question that the best
for Duke was at the center of his
interest."
Davison had wanted to enlarge the
basic sciences facilities, and Woodhall
carried on that drive when he became
dean, as did Dr. William G. Aniyan when
he succeeded Woodhall in 1964.
Among the results, which Woodhall
said Perkins "supported all the way
through," are the Nanaline H. Duke and
Alex H. Sands medical science buildings
on Research Drive.
"But more than supporting this
important need, Tom Perkins kept
pushing for a long-range plan for the
development of the medical center,"
Woodhall recalled. "He kept right on top
of it; he kept asking about it."
What resulted from this insistence and
the follow-through by Woodhall, Aniyan
and others is a master plan for medical
center development that provides for
orderly expansion on into the next
century.
"Tom Perkins was a very quiet, very
calm man who was devoted to the
medical center," Woodhall said, "and
there is no question but that the turning
point for the medical center was the
long-range planning and development that
he insisted on."
When Woodhall went on to become
associate provost and later chancellor pro
tem of the university, the man at the
medical center who stepped in to work
closest with Perkins and the other
Endowment trustees was Aniyan, who is
now vice president for health affairs.
Aniyan identified Perkins as being
"intensely interested in education, in
everything from the secondary school
through professional education. We were
privileged to have him equally interested
in health affairs and medicine. He would
go out of his way to help in an7 way
possible."
Beyond that, Aniyan said, "He was a
warm, sincere personal friend. He was
(Continued on page 2)