LAURELS

UCLA’s Dashew International Center for Students and Scholars honored José Molina, pioneer of the first U.S. Spanish-language radio network, with the Neil H. Jacoby International Award for his contributions in promoting international relations. Molina founded the Continental Broadcasting Corporation and is vice chairman for PROFMEX, a worldwide consortium for research on Mexico.... With a $100,000 gift from rare book dealer Kenneth Karmiole, the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies will establish the Kenneth Karmiole Fellowship to advance leadership in the field of library and information studies, with an emphasis on rare books and manuscripts.... The Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) has received a $28,750 grant from The Haynes Foundation Archival Grant Program to launch the Chicano Studies Archival Program in 2003-04 as an essential component of the CSRC Library. Under this new program, the CSRC archivist will process special collections and archival holdings related to the culture, history and achievements of the Chicano and Latino people of Los Angeles.... Sanford Barsky, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, received the 2003 Benjamin Castleman Award for writing the most outstanding paper in the field of human pathology published in English in 2002. His manuscript was printed in the American Journal of Pathology. The Castleman Award is sponsored by the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology and Massachusetts General Hospital.

HIGH FIVE

Comisión Feminil de Los Angeles (CFLA) honored Chicano Studies Research Center associate director Alicia Gaspar de Alba as one of eight “Exceptional Women” at an event celebrating Women’s History Month. In addition to the CFLA award, Gov. Gray Davis and Assemblywoman Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) each presented Gaspar de Alba with a special commendation.... The American College of Rheumatology Research and Education Foundation and the Lupus Research Institute announced that Maureen McMahon, a second-year rheumatology fellow, has been selected to receive the Lupus Investigator Fellowship Award. McMahon will pursue a career as a clinical investigator, focusing on accelerated atherosclerosis in women with lupus.

IN MEMORIAM

William P. Longmire Jr., one of the founders of the School of Medicine, died peacefully at home on May 9. He was 89.

Longmire came to Los Angeles as the first chairman of surgery at UCLA in 1948, after his training at Johns Hopkins. At 34 years of age, he was referred to by many in the surgical field as “having the most promise in the nation.” He served as UCLA’s surgical chairman until 1976 and continued in medical practice at UCLA, becoming professor emeritus in 1984.

During this time, Longmire became recognized as a surgeon without equal, a superb teacher and an undisputed leader. He received both national and international awards and was named an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in both Edinburgh and England and was recognized by the Italian, Swiss, French and German surgical societies.

He served on the American College of Surgeons’ Board of Regents, ultimately as its president. He also served as president of the Society of Surgical Chairmen, the American Surgical Association, the International Federation of Surgical Colleges and the Los Angeles Surgical Society, and as chairman of the American Board of Surgery.

Born in Sapulpa, Okla., Longmire graduated from the University of Oklahoma and Johns Hopkins Medical School. Before starting his surgical training in Baltimore, he maintained his father’s practice in family medicine for two years in Sapulpa when his father became ill. He was particularly proud to be inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.

Longmire was trained by Alfred Blalock at Johns Hopkins during a pivotal time in American surgery and residency training. He established close personal relationships with fellow residents who went on to become chairmen of surgery at Vanderbilt, Duke, Cornell, the University of Pittsburgh, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Once asked what it was like to be in the company of so many great surgeons, he responded, “Oh, I suppose we all thought that was average.”

During that time he developed imaginative operations, including what was probably the first microvascular procedure in which the mammary artery and vein were connected to the mesentery of a segment of small bowel, which was then used as a replacement for the esophagus after cancer removal.

While a surgical resident at Johns Hopkins, Longmire was a member of the first surgical team to successfully perform the “Blue Baby” operation, a groundbreaking procedure that allowed infants with a severe heart deformity to live a normal life. The operation began to define cardiac surgery as we know it today. Longmire also personally helped the development of cardiac surgery in Europe, serving as a visiting professor at the Free University of Berlin, from which he received one of his many honorary degrees. Other degrees came from the University of Lund, Sweden; Heidelberg University, Germany; and the University of Athens, Greece.

Just before leaving Johns Hopkins, he was appointed as its first professor of plastic surgery.

Longmire surrounded himself at UCLA with some of the best surgeons in the world. He recruited the very finest talent in general surgery, urology, orthopaedics, plastic surgery, ophthalmology, and ear, nose and throat to form UCLA’s first surgical department. Those efforts helped define surgery and its specializations at UCLA, and very quickly established a preeminent department whose reputation endures today in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Regarded by many as one of the most influential surgeons of the 20th century, Longmire’s contributions were summarized by Gerald Levey, dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and provost of UCLA Medical Sciences, who said, “UCLA’s School of Medicine would not have the prominent reputation it enjoys today were it not for the extraordinary contributions of Dr. William Longmire.”

His scientific bibliography numbers more than 350 published scientific articles and four books. In his later years, he wrote “Starting from Scratch,” a book describing the founding of UCLA’s School of Medicine and the development of residency training at UCLA, Harbor General and Wadsworth Veterans Hospital.

“The Professor,” as his residents respectfully called him, was -- above any other accomplishment -- a master surgeon.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the UCLA Foundation/Longmire Memorial, UCLA Medical Sciences, 10945 LeConte Avenue, Suite 3132, Los Angeles, Calif., 90095.