VETERINARY DEANS AT TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY (1916-2009)

By Donald F. Smith, DVM, DACVS
Posted January 14, 2016

Author's Note: This is the second of six contiguous articles on veterinary medicine at Texas A&M University, in honor of the college’s centennial year.

Mark Francis was the founder and the first dean of the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine (as it was called then). He had been the first veterinary graduate of the Ohio State University and arrived in the late 1880s at the land-grant Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University). For almost two decades even before the college was actually formed, Francis taught courses in the veterinary sciences and conducted  research on the tick-borne protozoal disease called Texas Cattle Fever that was stifling the cattle industry.

Current dean Eleanor Green attributes the economic relationship to the cattle industry as the rationale for establishing the veterinary college. “Cattle and Texas Fever,” Green says, “is what justified establishing a separate college and providing funding for the veterinary college in Texas in 1916 (personal communication, 2014).

Francis remained dean for 20 years after the college was established in 1916. The second, third and fourth deans (Ross Marsteller, Ralph Dunn and Ivan Boughton) were also graduates of Ohio State. Boughton served until 1953, when Willis Armistead was appointed. A World War II veteran, Armistead was a Texas A&M alumnus and also held an appointment as AVMA president (1957-58). He was dean at Texas A&M for only four years, then moved to Michigan State University and later to the University of Tennessee, serving as veterinary dean at both universities.

During Alvin Price’s deanship (1957-73), the college assumed responsibility for teaching large numbers of undergraduate students in the pre-professional curriculum. It was not until 2004 that the name was changed to College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, reflecting this increased responsibility.

Texas A&M alumnus George Shelton ’48 was the college’s seventh dean. Referred to many as a “students’ dean”, the college expanded greatly in size and programs during his 15-year tenure. The first endowed professorship was also created during this period.

Another Ohio State alumnus named John Shadduck served as dean for seven years. Highly respected as a national leader, Shadduck led the college through a period of major research growth and development. He enhanced the DVM teaching programs by including veterinarians in private practice and those in research institutions outside of academia. He also presided over the construction of a new veterinary research building and new large animal hospital.

Texas alumnus H. Richard Adams ’66, who had led the veterinary college at the University of Missouri returned to his alma mater in 1998 and served as dean until 2009. During his tenure, the college continued to expand and develop its research programs in concert with many external collaborators including Baylor College of Medicine.

During Adams’ deanship, Professor Bonnie Beaver became the first female chair of the AVMA’s Executive Board (now called the Board of Directors) and was elected to the AVMA presidency in 2004.

Dr. Smith invites comments at dfs6@cornell.edu.   He also acknowledges the assistance of Dean Eleanor Green and Megan Palsa, PhD (Executive Director of Communications, Media and Public Relations) for their assistance. 


The topic for the next blog (Tuesday, January 18th) is the current dean of the college, Dr. Eleanor Green.

Veterinary Education in Indiana: From Horses to Hogs to the Human-Animal Bond

By Donald F. Smith, Cornell University

January 19, 2015

Though Purdue’s first veterinary class graduated just over 50 years ago (in 1963), there had been a long and vibrant history of veterinary education dating back to the 1890s. 

During the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, Indiana was home to the fourth-largest private college in the country, the Indiana Veterinary College. When the college closed in 1924, the AVMA referred to its “honorable existence for over 30 years,”(2) and noted that there remained only eleven veterinary colleges in the country. “Whether these [eleven colleges] will satisfactorily discharge the responsibilities which have fallen upon their shoulders, time only will tell.”

A smaller college in Terre Haute did not operate as long, but is reported to have contained impressive clinical facilities including those for dogs and cats. That was unusual because the major focus sustaining for-profit schools in that era was the medical management of the large numbers of city horses which were the mainstay of urban commerce and personal conveyance before the arrival of the internal combustion engine. With the disappearance of the horse, the impact of WWI and increasing regulatory challenges, the for-profit colleges of that era all closed. 

Meanwhile, some 60 miles northwest of Indianapolis in West Lafayette, Purdue University began instruction as the state’s land grant university in 1874. A vibrant animal and public health research program within the Department of Veterinary Science in the School of Agriculture soon began to develop.  The second department chair was Walter L. Williams who had studied at McGill in Canada under physician William Osler. Williams was a passionate researcher, educator and clinician. Though he stayed only a few years before being recruited to New York by James Law as one of the founding faculty at Cornell, he left an indelible mark on the reputation for quality and rigor in the new department at Purdue.

The department soon developed a program in bacteriology and milk quality under physician/veterinarian, A.W. Bitting; and hog cholera under veterinarian Robert A. Craig, who remained department chair until his death in 1939. Under Craig’s leadership, a hog cholera virus and antiserum facility was established at Purdue that served the entire state and gained national recognition. Research programs were also established in Brucellosis, swine dysentery and other important livestock diseases. During the 1940s, graduate programs at the MS and PhD levels were established, and the teaching of veterinary courses to undergraduate agriculture students expanded.

At the end of WWII, seven veterinary colleges were established at other universities, including at the land grant universities in neighboring Illinois, Minnesota and Missouri; and the Purdue trustees started planning a veterinary college of their own. Established in 1957, the college was first called the School of Veterinary Science and Medicine to recognize its foundation in the former Department of Veterinary Science and its ongoing commitment to research and scholarship. 

The development of the college in the 1960s coincided with several major changes in the veterinary profession. Though still critically important in a state with a strong agricultural economy, livestock and public health were no longer the only priorities.  Companion animal medicine was becoming an important aspect of veterinary education, research and clinical practice, and more faculty were being appropriated to this burgeoning field of study.  Clinical specialties were becoming established to supplement primary care practice, and new techniques including radiation imaging were becoming commonplace as the dogs, cats and other pets moved into households and became part of the family structure.

Purdue also tested innovative curricular initiatives with a goal of allowing students to spend more instructional time in the clinical areas of their choice. Faculty experimented with new educational technologies, including the “Block System” for scheduling courses, and Purdue became known nationally for many of these advances.

In 1982 the Center for the Human-Animal Bond (3) was established, marking the growing recognition of the importance of pets within the family structure, and the critical role that pets and other animals play in the psychological and physiological health of humans. Purdue’s 21^st century research involving animal and human health and the biomedical sciences also is impacting such strategic areas as oncology, biosecurity and infectious diseases.

Over a century and a quarter of advancing animal and human health, Indiana educational programs have covered the spectrum from the private, for profit urban colleges of the late 19^th century, to the land grant’s veterinary science department model of the first half of the 20^th century, to the comprehensive veterinary medical college of the last 60 years. 

In some respects, it’s a microcosm of the entire history of veterinary medicine in the United States.

By Dr. Donald F. Smith, dfs6@cornell.edu

1. J Amer Vet Med Assoc 1924; 66(4): 401-403

2. Stockton, Jack J (editor). A Century of Service. Veterinary Medicine in Indiana 1884-1984. (Indiana Veterinary Medical Association 1984) p 126-9

3. Originally called the Center for Applied Ethology and Human-Animal Bond

Five Tuskegee University Veterinary Graduates from the 1970s Become Deans

By Donald F. Smith, Cornell University
January 15, 2015

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr Day

Patterns of leadership in veterinary medicine fascinate me.  Why, for example, are there so many foreign-educated veterinary deans and department chairs in our country’s veterinary colleges? (1,2) Why are there so few women deans? (3)

Now, a question that I’ve also pondered for some time: why have so many Tuskegee DVM graduates from the 1970s attained dean positions? There have been fewer than 100 permanent dean appointments in the AAVMC-member US veterinary colleges in the last three decades, yet five who graduated during the 1970s are Tuskegee graduates. All are African-American.

"Lifting the Veil"
Statue of Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee University
Photo by the author, 2012

During African American History Month in February, I shall share with readers some of the responses I received from these deans about what inspired them to achieve such distinction.

But first, who are these five leaders? 

Alfonza Atkinson served as the fifth veterinary dean at Tuskegee University from 1999 until his untimely passing in 2004. Also an undergraduate at Tusksegee, Dr. Atkinson received his DVM in 1973. He was subsequently awarded a MPH (1988) and a PhD from the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Environmental Health Science-Environmental Toxicology Program (1995).  Dr. Atkinson was a commissioned veterinarian at the Birmingham (Alabama) Racing Commission, and also a supervisory veterinary medical officer in the Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service in Tallahassee, Florida. He returned to Tuskegee as a member of the faculty in the departments of Microbiology and Biomedical Sciences. He was associate dean for administration and interim dean before being appointed dean of the college.

Michael Blackwell, the son of a graduate of Tuskegee's second DVM class, was appointed dean at the University of Tennessee in 2000. He was the first African-American dean of a majority veterinary college. Dr. Blackwell operated a private veterinary practice following graduation in 1975. He then entered public service, working for the FDA for 20 years in both human and veterinary branches, and rising to the position of deputy director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine.  In 1994 he was appointed chief veterinarian of the U.S. Public Health Service, and in 1997 promoted to the rank of Assistant Surgeon General (Rear Admiral) of the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service. Dr. Blackwell was appointed chief of staff of the Office of the Surgeon General in 1999. From there, he moved to Knoxville and served as dean for more than several years.  Dr. Blackwell, who also holds the MPH degree, is now Senior Director of Veterinary Policy for the Humane Society of the United States.

Phillip Nelson received his undergraduate degree from Jackson State University where his father, a Tuskegee graduate with a degree in Food Service Administration, was Assistant Vice President for Business Affairs. After earning his DVM from Tuskegee in 1979, he developed his clinical skills in internal medicine at Mississippi State University, and later pursued a PhD in immunology and biotechnology at North Carolina State University.  His research activities primarily focused on feline infections as biological models for human HIV, and the development of lymphocytic immunity in the dog and cat. Dr. Nelson returned to Tuskegee as head of the Department of Small Animal Medicine and Surgery, then in 1994 moved back to Mississippi State as associate dean, a position he held for over a decade. He then moved to Western University of the Health Sciences in Pomona, California and became Executive Associate Dean of the Pre-clinical Curriculum. Two years later, in 2007, he succeeded Dr. Shirley Johnston as the second dean of the college. Dean Nelson serves on various committees of the AVMA and AAVMC, with a special interest in diversity issues as they relate to the veterinary profession.

A board-certified radiologist, Ruby Perry is interim dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine, Nursing and Allied Health Sciences at Tuskegee University. She is the first female African American veterinary dean in the United States.  Dr. Perry had previously served as associate dean for academic affairs since 2007. After undergraduate studies at Belhaven College and Jackson State University, Dr. Perry received her BS and DVM from Tuskegee in 1976 and 1977, respectively. She initially pursued a clinical career, completing the veterinary radiology residency at Michigan State University and an MS degree (Microbiology).  Dr. Perry’s administrative experience includes section chief of veterinary radiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Michigan State University, acting chair of the department of small animal medicine, surgery and radiology at Tuskegee University, interim chief of staff in the office of the president at Tuskegee University. A decorated teacher and mentor, she has been recognized for her leadership in professional and community service. She is a former president of the Tuskegee Veterinary Medical Association.

Willie Reed graduated from Tuskegee in 1978, then attended Purdue where he earned a PhD in veterinary pathology. A diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Pathologists and charter diplomate of the American College of Poultry Veterinarians, Dr. Reed served for several years on the Purdue faculty in the avian diagnostic services assuming increasing administrative responsibilities, and was eventually recruited to Director of the Animal Health Diagnostic Laboratory (4) at Michigan State University (1990). He was subsequently named Chair of the Department of Pathobiology and Diagnostic Investigation. Dr. Reed returned to Purdue in 2008 as dean, a position he currently holds. Reed has held several other major leadership positions in veterinary medicine, including President of the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC), president of the American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians (AAVLD), and chair of the AVMA’s Council on Research. He was appointed as a member of the Board of Directors of Zoetis Inc. in 2014.

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(1) Smith, Donald F. Foreign-Born Deans of Veterinary Medicine. Perspectives in Veterinary Medicine. December  5, 2014.

(2) Smith, Donald F. Education of a Dean. Perspectives in Veterinary Medicine. July 7, 2013.

(3) Smith, Donald F. and Julie Kumble. Mentoring as a Career Factor: Six US Women Veterinary Deans Reflect. Perspectives in Veterinary Medicine. September 12, 2013.

(4) Now called the Diagnostic Center for Population and Animal Health  

Louis A. Merillat, Veterinarian of the Half-Century

By Donald F. Smith, Cornell University

Posted January 13, 2015

Lost from the memories of most living veterinarians is the man who some considered the most influential veterinarian of the first half of the 20^th century. At least, that’s how the Chicago Tribune referred to him when reporting an interview with him in July 1950, when he was 82.

“I’ve worked for two things during my life,” he told the Tribune, “better education in veterinary medicine and better working conditions for the educated man.”(1)

Dr. Louis A. Merillat
(Photo provided by AVMA)

The son of a horseman from Ohio, Merillat attended the Ontario Veterinary College--it was less expensive than living in New York City-- then moved to Chicago to learn more about equine medicine from Matthew McKillip. Though a physician and not a veterinarian, McKillip had one of the most successful equine practices in the country and he would later start a three-year veterinary college that carried his name.

Merillat became an instructor at McKillip (1893-1900; 1913-19) and also the Chicago Veterinary College (1900-13) while maintaining a vibrant equine practice during the heyday of the urban horse. Working and teaching out of the McKillip College facilities as well as his own practice at 1827 S. Wabash Street, he developed new surgical operations and anesthetic techniques. His expertise attracted the attention of some of the most prominent stables of the city, including several with show teams of draft horses.

During WWI he was a veterinarian for the 41^st Division and later became chief veterinarian for the First Army. According to the Tribune, "he supervised the care and treatment of tens of thousands for horses crippled in battle."

After the war, he returned to France and spent six months studying at the Alfort National Veterinary College. By the time he returned home, “the automobile had wiped out" his practice so he turned to writing. He authored a major book on equine surgery and became editor-in-chief of the JAVMA.  He also authored a two-volume book on military veterinary history.  Always having been active in organized veterinary medicine, he served a president of AVMA in 1924-25.

Near the end of his life, at the 60^th anniversary of his Ontario Veterinary College graduation in 1948, he was toasted as the “outstanding veterinarian in America.”

Merillat died on Feb 25, 1956, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.

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(1) Merrick, Mary Lee. Dr. Merillat is Honored as Veterinarian. Chicago Tribune, April 2, 1950. This citation applies to quotations and information throughout this story.

Walter Williams, Cornell's Only Non-Credentialed Veterinary Faculty

By Donald F. Smith, Cornell University
Posted January 5, 2015

It took Walter Williams 40 years to get a steady job.

In the years between growing up on a farm and attending a one-room school in Illinois to becoming an inaugural faculty at Cornell’s veterinary college in 1896, Williams attended a Presbyterian seminary, the Illinois Industrial University (now the University of Illinois) and the Montreal Veterinary College in Canada. His principal instructors were a veterinarian from London’s Royal Veterinary College (while in Illinois) and, in Montreal, a physician who was just seven years his senior.  Though he had taken several veterinary courses in the agricultural college in Champaign-Urbana, his total veterinary college exposure was a single six-month session at Montreal. [i]

Because Williams never completed any single course of study, he never earned a diploma or degree of any sort.  His sole award of merit (from Montreal) was a medal that according to Cornell lore, his children used as a teething ring.

Following his short stint in Montreal, Williams practiced rural veterinary medicine in Indiana, and held positions at Purdue University and Montana Agricultural College in Bozeman. While there, he received an invitation from Louis A. Merillat, the founder of the McKillip Veterinary College in Chicago, to teach at that college. When negotiations broke down, Merillat invited Williams to apply for the position as dean but that offer, also, was not consummated.

Instead, Williams went east to Ithaca, NY, where he became one the six founding faculty of the new veterinary college at Cornell University under the leadership of James Law. Professor Law determined that a clinician (in addition to himself) was needed to complement the histologist, physiologist, pathologist and anatomist already assembled. Just a couple of months before the college was to open with a class of 11 students, he invited Williams to travel to Ithaca for an interview. Williams subsequently became the sixth faculty member to be recruited for the fledgling college.

Though he never held a veterinary degree, Williams was an able clinician. He also had a scientific mind having been educated in the basic sciences by none other than William Osler, who would go on to become one of the founding faculty at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the leading physician of his generation.

The lack of formal credentials, noteworthy even at this early stage in veterinary education, did not diminish the wisdom shown by James Law in recruiting Williams to be one of Cornell’s founding faculty.  For the fledgling university to reach all the way across the country for a Chair of Surgery must have seemed ironic to some people, however, because shortly after his appointment was announced, an acquaintance of Williams is said to have remarked, “Well that is from the sublime to the ridiculous, for Cornell University to come to Montana for a professor.”

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[i] Leonard, Ellis P. A Cornell Heritage: Veterinary Medicine 1868-1908. (Ithaca, New York, New York State College of Veterinary Medicine, 1979) 190-8. This citation applies to quotations and information throughout this story.

Monuments to Veterinary Medicine, Part 2

Donald F. Smith, Cornell University

July 9, 2014

The oral interview is an effective way to capture the history of veterinary medicine and also honor those whose impact on the profession might otherwise have been lost. This is the second part in a five-part series on oral interviews I conducted starting in 2007.1

One of my challenges in conducting and preserving these interviews is determining the boundaries for reporting where accuracy and comprehensiveness clash with confidentiality and good taste. Sometimes the lines were clear, such as when a nonagenarian alumnus in the midst of telling me about student life in the 1930s, shared a disgusting anti-Semitic quote that had been made by one of the instructors while he and a Jewish student had been on clinical duty together 70 years earlier. As he told me the story, seemingly reliving it for the first time in decades, he turned his head and gazed across the room from his seat on the living room sofa. His voice, which had been soft and sensitive, turned abrasive and discordant as he blurted out the offensive remark. Almost involuntarily, he snapped his head back, looked straight into my eyes and, with a trembling voice demanded, “You won’t write that, will you?” I assured him that I would delete that segment from the tape (which I did), and we proceeded with the interview. For me, that was a responsible way to handle that situation, and I have not repeated the remark either orally or in writing even though the interviewee passed several years ago.

Other situations have been more difficult to handle, such as when the historical record has been revised (perhaps unknowingly) by the surviving members of the family. I am aware of two occasions in which that happened, and they presented difficult dilemmas. In both cases, I ultimately chose the route of non-disclosure, though it meant failing to recount the complete story as evidenced by examination of the institution’s period faculty minutes.

Neither the surviving spouse, in one instance, nor the surviving daughter, in the other, told of their family member’s dismissal from Cornell, which in both cases was for academic reasons. One man failed at Cornell, then proceeded to another veterinary college a year later (following a brief stint in the military) and successfully completed the veterinary curriculum at that institution. The other man was alleged by family members to have left Cornell because of financial hardship, but in fact had been dismissed for academic reasons. He later returned to Cornell and successfully completed his DVM degree.

During a few occasions, highly personal information was disclosed in the course of the interview. Sometimes this was unintentional, such as information relating to a sexual relationship or a description of a wayward member of the family, and the interviewee later requested that I not share it (and I have not).

In the first installment of summaries of the oral interviews in Enduring Veterinary Legacy,2 I shared the abstract of the interview with Dr. Tevis Goldhaft, who had entered Cornell in 1931 as one of 17 Jewish students in this class. To thwart the establishment of a new veterinary college on Long Island, Cornell increased its enrollment of Jewish students to approximately 20% throughout the 1930s. Many of these students were from urban areas, especially New York City and the surrounding areas, and did not have extensive farm backgrounds.

Dr. Harry J. Fallon, 1938, Graduation Photo

(© New York State Veterinary College, Cornell University)

In addition to Dr. Goldhaft, I interviewed two of these veterinarians who also graduated in the 1930s, and the surviving spouses of two others. Dr. Harry Fallon and Dr. Henry Grossman graduated in 1938.

Fallon began his educational career under his given name, Henry Feldman, but changed his surname thinking it was too “Jewish-sounding”. He was concerned it might limit his opportunities for employment. As it turned out, his Jewish heritage was the strongest factor in his getting an exceptional starting job in a good practice.

The owners of a practice in Akron, Ohio, included a veterinarian of the Quaker faith who had graduated from the Ohio State University, and a Catholic man from Cornell. According to Dr. Fallon, the two could never resolve between themselves whether to hire entry-level associates who were either Quaker or Catholic, and so they ended the stalemate by agreeing to hire Jewish graduates. They continued this practice for several years, usually recruiting the top academic Jewish student from Cornell every two years, and then sending them on to start their own practices.

In the spring of 1938, the offer went to a student who had an identical twin in the same class. But the young man (and, in turn, his brother) declined, as they had decided to work together and open a practice in the New York City area. The offer next fell to Fallon who excitedly accepted the invitation. It proved to be an outstanding job with great mentors, and he eventually moving to West Virginia where he became a prominent veterinarian, even writing articles while in clinical practice. He rose to become president of the state’s Veterinary Medical Association.

Dr. Henry E. Grossman, 1938, Graduation Photo

(© New York State Veterinary College, Cornell University)

Dr. Henry Grossman also graduated in 1938. Though I had known him as a prominent member of the New York City veterinary community and former president of the state’s Veterinary Medical Society, he had passed in 2000 and my interview was with his wife and one of his daughters. The Grossman story describes what it was like to develop a veterinary practice from its beginning, by initially transforming a few rooms in their mother’s home in Brooklyn, then moving the practice into a rented corner building and hanging a neon sign in the shape of a Scottie dog, made popular because of President Roosevelt’s dog named Fala. Dr. Grossman’s practice was very successful, and he maintained it for 60 years until health problems forced his retirement.

Dr. Isidor I. Sprecker, 1939, Graduation Photo

(© New York State Veterinary College, Cornell University)

Eight members of the graduating class of 1939 were also Jewish. I knew Dr. Isidor Sprecker (formerly Sprecher) very well as he was a frequent visitor to Cornell and, with his wife, had become a major benefactor to the college. The veterinary library and also the comparative cancer program bear the Sprecher3 name in recognition of their many contributions.

I never conducted a recorded interview with Dr. Sprecker during this lifetime, but Mrs. Sylvia Sprecker granted an interview at her Delray Beach home in 2008. She described her husband’s experiences as an officer in the Army Veterinary Corps during World War II. He was stationed in the British West Indies where he was the chief food inspector but also took care of the dogs and other pets of the officers on the base. She and Isidor were married in July 1945 with, in Mrs. Sprecker’s words, “a honeymoon on Barbados, courtesy of Uncle Sam.”

Dr. Sprecker had a strong passion for education and a deep admiration for Ezra Cornell, the institution’s co-founder and first benefactor. Shortly after presenting a speech to alumni in January 2004 honoring the birthday of Mr. Cornell, I received a telephone call informing me that Isidor had just died. I felt a warm rush go through my body as I realized how these two men of such different backgrounds had been so similar in their core values of learning and giving.

Dr. Robert Ferber, 1939, Graduation Photo

(© New York State Veterinary College, Cornell University)

My 2008 visit with Dr. Robert Ferber in Syosset on Long Island remains one of my favorites. Ferber was a warm and robust gentleman, and was so well-prepared for the interview that I hardly had to prompt him as he progressed into a long, interesting and articulate description of his life, starting from childhood through his days at Cornell.

The child of Russian immigrants, Ferber was raised in Brooklyn and Queens. He applied to Cornell with an undergraduate degree (rare at that time when the pre-veterinary requirements were for one year of college education) but was denied admission and went to Michigan State University and was accepted as a transfer student after his first year. Though he had been bitterly disappointed not to have been accepted initially at Cornell despite his stellar academic record, Ferber chose to speak about the positive aspects of his student life, and the many students of all backgrounds who would became lifelong friends and colleagues.

Ferber started a small animal practice in Bayside, New York, in a period when there were only four established practices in the area. He became the patriarch of a family of veterinarians that would eventually include not only his younger brother, but his son and grandson. He was one of the longest surviving members of the Class of 1939, passing last December (2013), nine months before his 100th birthday.

Veterinary medicine in the pre World War II era was largely defined by agricultural priorities and admission of students from rural areas. The period stories of Jewish veterinarians who were the children of Russian and East European immigrants coming from an urban background provides what you might first imagine to be a grating juxtaposition of religious, cultural and professional differences.

Rather than differences, however, these interviews consistently tell of how students from widely different backgrounds formed a common bond during the harsh Depression years. Along with veterinarians with similar values from across the country, these men and an occasional woman, shaped the growth and development of veterinary medicine in ways that set the stage for the next half century.

Dr. Smith welcomes comments at dfs6@cornell.edu

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1 Smith, Donald F. Monuments to Veterinary Medicine. Perspectives in Veterinary Medicine, June 23rd, 2014.
2 Smith, Donald F. An Enduring Veterinary Legacy, Bringing History to Life.
3 In the named tributes to Dr. and Mrs. Sprecker, the former spelling (Sprecher) is used.