Scholarship is renamed to honor esteemed cardiologist and cardiothoracic surgeon.When the American Pulmonary Medicine Institute (APMI) established the Dr. Orville W. Clayton Endowed Medical Scholarship in 2015, the name was significant. Clayton had been a founding member when the institute—which serves to educate patients and physicians alike, support scholarly research, and provide global humanitarian relief—was formed in 1991. He was also well known as a groundbreaking cardiothoracic surgeon in Birmingham.

Therefore, it was no small decision to amend the scholarship’s name. After another beloved and longtime APMI board member, Richard Russell, M.D., passed away earlier this year, the board chose to change the scholarship’s name to honor both men, officially renaming it the O.W. Clayton/Richard O. Russell Endowed Medical Scholarship.

Frank Sutton Jr., M.D., a founding APMI board member and current executive director, remembers Clayton’s reaction to the suggestion of adding Russell’s name. “He told me, ‘Of all the people that you might ask me to share the name on the scholarship, I can think of no one that it would be a higher honor to have on there than Richard,’” Sutton says.

Both Clayton and Russell were towering figures in their respective fields. Sutton notes that Clayton (now retired), “probably has more survivors in Alabama who had lung cancer than anybody I can imagine. He did some radical surgeries. He knew what he was doing, and he was a pioneer.”

Russell, meanwhile, was honored during his 46-year career in cardiology not only as chairman of the Alabama Chapter of the American College of Cardiology but also as program chairman for the American College of Cardiology, responsible for their annual meetings for several years. He was on the editorial board for both the journal Circulation as well as the Journal of Clinical Cardiology and was widely recognized for his contributions as an educator, researcher, and clinician.

Dr. Orville Clayton and Cliff Deerman, the first recipient of the medical scholarship that bears Clayton’s name, in April 2015. The board of the American Pulmonary Medicine Institute voted to rename the scholarship to also honor longtime board member Richard Russell (pictured right) this year.His widow, Phyllis Hutchison Russell, says she was honored to learn of her husband’s name being added to the scholarship. “He was so interested in medical students and their careers, and was such a server of people,” she says. “I think he would be very pleased that some of the money in his memory would go to helping a medical student; he would be very humbled.”

Sutton says the goal is for the Clayton/Russell scholarship to reach an endowment large enough that at least two students every year will receive scholarship funds, while leaving the principal intact so it can continue helping students in perpetuity. He adds the board was particularly excited to learn about Sydney Sheppard, who received the scholarship for the 2017/2018 academic year. “She suffered from a childhood cancer, and she plans to go into pediatric oncology,” Sutton says. “She’s going to take care of children with cancer like she was cared for, so that makes us very happy.”

In a letter to the board, Sheppard echoed Clayton’s description of her motivation. “As a survivor,” she wrote, “I feel a duty to serve other cancer survivors as their advocate and educator, dedicated to improving their overall life experience.”

That is the spirit Sutton says he believes would mean the most to the two men whose names the scholarship bears.

“Our goal is to convince this young group of medical students that they need to pay it forward as it has been given to them,” he says. “I would like to one day see the graduates of UAB who have had a scholarship all give back to a scholarship fund. When you talk about compassion, you have compassion for patients, but another compassionate thing you can do is help train those who come after you.”

To learn more about giving to medical student scholarships, contact Jessica Brooks Lane at 205-975-4452 or jblane@uab.edu. 

By Rosalind Fournier