W. L. JACK EDWARDS, MD
I first met George Race in 1945 at the Phi Chi medical fraternity house, where he served as house manager in return for reduced cost of room and board. He was a sophomore and I was a freshman at the University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical School. After graduation, George had an internship in pathology at Duke under Dr. Forbus. Then he tried an internship in surgery at Boston City Hospital. That year I had an internship in pathology at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. A college roommate of mine had found a small apartment on Newbury Street for Patsy and me, but it was adjacent to four railroad tracks. There was no air-conditioning so the windows were open. When we heard a train coming, it was a race to shut the windows before the smoke came billowing in. Patsy contacted Anne Race to look for another place to live. They found a two bedroom, one bath apartment facing the Charles River, and we decided to share it to cut expenses. Our first child, Tricia, came in January. George never complained about a crying child. In general, he was very accepting and not critical of people.
Then George went to the Air Force for training as a flight surgeon, winding up at Nagoya, Japan. I had a year at Mass Memorial in medicine and 4 months of a medical residency at Parkland before being called to active duty in the Navy and was assigned to the Army when the Korean War broke out. I wound up as the pathologist and lab officer at the hepatitis center hospital at Kyoto, Japan. Courtesy of a kind commanding officer, I was able to visit George in Nagoya, which was bombed heavily in World War II since it was Japan's major air center. We drove around the city, seeing only block after block of vacant land cleared of rubble 5 years after the war. Years later, George had his own plane, and he flew into his early 80s.
After finishing his training at Duke and Peter Bent Brigham, George got his first job as the pathologist for a hospital in Tampa, Florida. That year I had a National Institutes of Health traineeship in cardiology in Birmingham with Dr. Harrison. So we packed up our three children and visited the Races. George liked his job but wanted to return to Dallas. It was not long before he became an assistant professor in pathology at UT Southwestern. The medical school was nice, but low pay led to his taking a job with Dr. Terrell, who did much of the pathology and lab services for Fort Worth and West Texas.
When Baylor University Medical Center (BUMC) was looking for a new chief of pathology, Jesse Thompson and I, among others, campaigned for George to take the job. He was chosen and made a very good contract to provide pathology and laboratory services for the hospital. George has trained many pathology residents, and all of them have passed the pathology boards. He found good people to run the Baylor laboratories. He exhibited good organizational skills.
In 1955, Patsy, Anne, Alice McCarley, and Margaret Clayton decided to form a gourmet club, rotating in turn the chore of fixing a multicourse fancy dinner monthly. It was a bonanza for George, Ben McCarley, John Clayton, and me! The group did meet monthly into the 1990s!
In 1960, I told George that I wanted to buy some land using a loan from the new Texas Veterans Land Board. This precipitated George's first raw land purchase near Murphy, Texas, and started his lifelong pursuit of real estate. Anne and George have invited us to their ranch near Lampasas and to their South Padre beach house. George preferred air-conditioning over salt water, so he stayed in the house and watched three television sets simultaneously.
I have been on three different deer leases with George. He liked the camaraderie with the other hunters but not learning the finer points of deer hunting. He frequently took a stack of medical journals into a blind, flipped pages to advertise his presence to deer, and then wondered why he saw no deer that day. He would often arrive late at night after a day's work at the hospital wearing a suit, in which he hunted the next day. On another occasion, he brought slides and movies from a recent trip to Africa. That evening, he projected both slides and movies simultaneously on the wall of the cabin. His only commentary was a repeated “Africa is lousy with animals.”
George had the ability to concentrate and the drive to finish a job promptly. When he began his tenure at Baylor, there were about 100 unfinished autopsy reports. He worked night and day for 2 months until all reports were current.
George believed in education. While a resident at Duke, he obtained a master's degree from a nearby college. While at Baylor, he finished his PhD at Southern Methodist University (SMU). He also took one course in contract law from the SMU law school to help with his real estate investments. George was instrumental in starting and editing the BUMC Proceedings, a good place for Baylor residents and researchers to place their papers, as well as a good advertising vehicle among physicians and health professionals. All four of his children became physicians, perhaps a tribute to his love of medicine.
Although he was dedicated to pathology, he had many other interests and abilities. He was an upholsterer, having worked in a furniture factory during high school. He was also a plumber, electrician, and auto mechanic. He directed the continuing education department at the medical school.
George was a good pathologist, a good teacher, a good organizer, a man blessed with a near-perfect memory, a forward thinker, a good father, and a good husband. Most of all to me, he was a good friend.
JOSEPH W. FAY, MD
Dr. George Race was instrumental in the early success of the Baylor Research Institute and the Charles A. Sammons Cancer Institute. His dedication to laboratory discovery, clinical pathological correlation in malignant disease, and translation to the clinical practice of medicine was unsurpassed at Baylor. His ability to understand and help direct investigator-initiated research was evident in the early interaction with me during the establishment of the hematopoietic cell transplantation program at the Sammons Cancer Institute and Baylor Research Institute. This was evident by his support and encouragement to me and others in establishing new approaches to the treatment of cancer with cellular therapy initially using hematopoietic stem cells and, through his legacy, blood cells used to immunize patients to treat cancer in clinical trials involving dendritic cells alone and in combination.
Dr. Race made it possible for the establishment of the North American Blood and Marrow Transplantation Program, one of the first cooperative transplant programs in the United States, whose members convened from several academic transplant centers for meetings in Dallas. As a result, several important developments were made in the field of clinical hematopoietic cell transplantation. These discoveries tested in clinical trials included new pretransplant conditioning regimens, cytokines to enhance marrow and immune recovery posttransplant, and methods to prevent graft-versus-host disease and opportunistic infections. These efforts resulted in several publications as well as Dallas community and peer-reviewed grant support.
Indeed, such early efforts with the support of Drs. John Fordtran and Marvin Stone led to the successful launching of studies in human immunology in our own laboratories in collaboration with several investigators led by Dr. Jacques Banchereau at the Baylor Institute for Immunology Research (BIIR). Such work resulted in a decade of successful funding by the National Cancer Institute in collaboration with Dr. Ralph Steinman, Nobel Laureate and discoverer of the dendritic cell. Indeed, the blood and marrow transplant research in some way played an important part in establishment of BIIR. Dr. Race with others provided the scientific and clinical catalyst for the BIIR, which has evolved into a major immunology institution with seminal work in autoimmunity, cancer immunotherapy, transplantation immunology, and infectious disease.
Dr. Race directly and indirectly is recognized as one of the most important members of the Baylor Research Institute's success. His attitude, work ethic, and interests continue to flourish. Dr. Race will be missed by many.
MICHAEL RAMSAY, MD
George Justice Race, MD, PhD, was a giant of a man and physician. His contributions to medicine and to BUMC have been outstanding. George's counseling and mentoring for me, during my career at Baylor, will never be forgotten.
George Race became chief of pathology at BUMC in 1959, but he also became a physician leader at Baylor. He planned and built the first “state-of-the-art” pathology laboratories. This experience caused him to write the leading textbook on this topic at the time, Laboratory Medicine. This continued on through 13 editions.
George's large interest in medical education and research resulted in him being a powerful force in the creation of both the A. Webb Roberts Center for Continuing Education and the Baylor Research Foundation, soon to become the Baylor Research Institute (BRI). George Race was a leader in both these entities. He was dean of the former and chairman of the latter. He also started BUMC Proceedings in 1988. This was planned as a medical journal that would publish the clinical reports of the Baylor residents. It was modeled from other hospital journals, such as those of the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and Henry Ford Hospital.
The legacy that George Race leaves is that of outstanding accomplishments. The BUMC Proceedings is now in its 27th year, is indexed by PubMed, and receives 2 million hits a year on the website. BRI is now a $60 million a year operation with over 900 active research projects underway, an National Institutes of Health Center of Excellence for lupus research, and federal grants exceeding $20 million a year. The intellectual property portfolio is large, many patents have been licensed by industry, and academic and industry collaborations flourish. The institutional review board was the first independent board to receive full accreditation from the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Programs, a fine accolade for the high standard of performance. The pathology department continues as a major foundation of the institution and has now partnered in a major innovative laboratory company, Medfusion.
George was not a politician. He always said what he thought and did not pull any punches. He continued on the BRI board until his death and was always a source of good counsel. We are also very grateful for his and Anne's support of BRI financially. The George and Anne Race Immunology Research Laboratory is providing internationally recognized results.
Boone Powell Sr. recruited George Race to Baylor, and they became close friends. The vision of Boone Powell was matched by the vision and innovation of George Race. Baylor was the beneficiary and is still reaping the rewards by becoming a world-recognized medical center.
George Race was a truly a giant among physicians, a man who could see the vision and accomplish it. With a warm and generous heart behind a challenging exterior, he accomplished much during his lifetime, for which we shall all be grateful.
ALBERT D. ROBERTS JR., MD
George Race was a peripatetic polymath. His energies and curiosity seemed inexhaustible. He authored many books on pathology. There was also his collection of old cars and, for a while, his beloved B25 bomber, such as the one he flew in the South Pacific and later in the Korean War. Also, he was busy at his ranch and with a tremendous amount of travel. He was a member of the New York Explorers Club. He was soft spoken, always accessible, and a fine pathologist and administrator, an unobtrusive presence in many venues.
Dr. Race and I were friends and colleagues from the 1960s, when he was chief of pathology at Baylor and I was practicing there. Later on, in the 1970s and 1980s, we were colleagues in academic administration at UT Southwestern; he, associate dean for continuing education, and I, associate dean for clinical affairs. I also cherished a friendship with his talented wife, the late Dr. Anne Race. I miss them both very much.
MARVIN J. STONE, MD
George Race was a multifaceted person: physician, educator, mentor, administrator, scientist, innovator, rancher, aviator, photographer, and explorer. A native Texan, George was one of the early students at UT Southwestern Medical School, graduating in 1947 at age 21. He received postgraduate training at Duke and in Boston and served on the faculty of Harvard Medical School at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital.
George returned to Dallas in 1955 and joined the faculty at Southwestern. He moved to BUMC in 1959, becoming chief of pathology, a position he held until his retirement in 1986.
With the support of Boone Powell Sr., George built an expanded, excellent pathology department at Baylor. Longtime members included Bill Kingsley, Sol Haberman, Weldon Tillery, Norman Helgeson, Allen Marengo-Rowe, Charles Rietz, Joe Newman, and several women including Gwendolyn Crass, Freida Carson, Marie Shaw, and Doris Vendrell. George also served as director of the pathology residency program during his entire tenure as chief at Baylor. Many practicing pathologists in Texas and surrounding states are graduates of the Baylor program.
In addition to building pathology at Baylor, George made three unique contributions to the institution. A gift from Mr. A. Webb Roberts in 1972 established the Center for Continuing Education, and George became its first dean. Initially, this was a joint venture with UT Southwestern Medical School, and George directed both programs. In 2012 some 250 CME activities with 45,000 participants (over 50% physicians) were sponsored by the A. Webb Roberts Center for Continuing Education.
Second, George was instrumental in forming the Baylor Research Institute in 1986. He served as its first chairman with the assistance of J. Lester Matthews. BRI remains the scientific research arm of the health care system and currently oversees more than $20 million in research grants as well as the institutional review board.
Third, in 1988 George established the BUMC Proceedings and was its first editor-in-chief. In the inaugural issue, he stated that the journal “is intended to serve as a forum for scientific communication and education and will include clinical, technical, and research articles; grand rounds; case reports; and articles related to available medical services throughout the Baylor Health Care System.” The first article was written by Ralph Tompsett entitled, “Reminiscing About Penicillin.” Rose Kraft played a major role in editing the Proceedings and other publications. BUMC Proceedings has grown in size and reputation under the leadership of Dr. Bill Roberts. Today each issue is sent to over 7000 health care professionals free of charge.
George was a consistently strong advocate of the cancer program at Baylor and one of the key medical staff members whose support led to the formation of the Sammons Cancer Center. When I came to Baylor in 1976 as director of the new Sammons Cancer Center and chief of oncology, George asked me to become director of immunology in his department, a position I held for 35 years. George was active in the American Cancer Society and, together with Dr. Billie Aronoff, gave Baylor a national presence in cancer care.
George was involved in a number of scholarly activities as investigator and author. He published over 150 articles in peer-reviewed journals and was the chief editor of Laboratory Medicine, a four-volume compendium of clinical pathology that went through 13 revisions. He also earned a PhD in anatomy and microbiology and attended law school for a year.
George Race left a huge imprint on BUMC. He often likened its potential to the Harvard hospitals and believed that Baylor could evolve from “a sleeping giant” into a recognized major academic center.
George and his lovely wife, Anne, a respected physician in her own right, were married for 61 years. Not only did they have distinguished medical careers themselves, but all four of their living children have become physicians. I know of no other contemporary family with such a legacy.