2007 Induction Ceremony, Awards Presentation and Reception
The University of Toledo - Main Campus
Driscoll Alumni Center
Balch Clapp Auditorium and Schmakel Room
March 23, 2007
4:00 - 6:00 p.m.
Program
|
Introduction Daniel J. Saevig |
| 2007 Medical Mission Hall of Fame Recipients |
| Ira A. Abrahamson, Jr. M.D. Emeritus Professor of Clinical Ophthalmology, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine Cincinnati, Ohio, USA |
|
Harold Adolph, M.D. |
| Lawrence V. Conway Ph.D., F.A.S.A. Emeritus Professor of Finance, The University of Toledo; President, Medical Mission Hall of Fame Toledo, Ohio, USA |
| James G. Diller, M.D. F.A.C.S. Medical Consultant; Chairman, Board of Directors, Diller Foundation Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA |
| Edna Adan Ismail Ph.D., S.R.N. Director, Edna Adan Hospital Republic of Somaliland |
2007 Recipients:
Ira A. Abrahamson Jr., MD
Calling Dr. Abrahamson a man of vision doesn't begin to tell his story — but it does not reflect the literal truth. The son of an ophthalmologist who headed several general hospitals, Ira stepped into a profession that might have seemed inevitable, given his family background. (His sister also became an ophthalmologist .) Less foreseeable was what became a defining passion for Ira Jr. — wiping out preventable blindness in children.
His mission began after his formal education: an undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduate and medical degrees from the UNC School of Medicine and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.
During his military service — he did stints with the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Army and the Ohio National Guard Medical Corps — he performed surgeries on young men and women whose eyes were either turning in or out. He realized that although he may have fixed the alignment of the eyes, he wasn't able to cure the poor vision of the misaligned eyes. Had the condition been detected in childhood, blindness could have been prevented.
As every ophthalmologist. knew and knows, the condition commonly known as lazy eye (amblyopia) is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children. Abrahamson transformed that knowledge into a crusade for early detection through vision-screening programs.
His passion paid off. Together with his family and in-laws, he founded the Abrahamson Pediatric Eye Institute at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, a medical center for teaching, research and patient care. Also to his credit is the founding of the Rotary Club Visual Screening Program, which is now thriving in 600 such clubs. When the program was initiated in Cincinnati, serious eye problems were detected in more than one out of four children screened.
He is also the founder of the Ira A. Abrahamson Jr. Chair of Pediatric Ophthalmology at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.
Abrahamson has spoken on the importance of vision screening in 20 nations, from Argentina to Malaysia to Venezuela, and for 20 years he served in medical missions in Mexico, where all the income generated by his surgeries went to the establishment of an eye clinic there. The author of four books, a number of teaching slide sets and scores of scholarly articles, he's also produced films on aspects of ophthalmic surgery.
Among his many honors is his most recent, the Distinguished Service Award of the School of Medicine of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Named a Great Living Rotarian, he and his wife, Linda, have three children; one son, not too surprisingly, is a third generation ophthalmologist.
Harold Adolph, MD and Bonnie Jo Adolph
Harold and Bonnie Jo (Adelsman) Adolph have been married for more than 50 years; their shared devotion to medical missions dates from the very beginning of their years together. As the son of a missionary surgeon (Dr. Paul Adolph) with the China Island Mission, Harold has medical missions in his blood but – you might say that Bonnie Jo received the transfusion and never looked back.
Born in China, Harold attended Chefoo Mission School and Shanghai American School before coming to American shores and Wheaton College, where he was completing his bachelor’s degree – and met Bonnie Jo, who was studying education and home economics. They were married after their graduation and while Harold was studying for his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Bonnie Jo supported the family with teaching and by managing a school cafeteria.
During a lifetime that saw him repeatedly saved from death, Harold came to see himself as what he’s called “being on assignment from God”. His achievements seem to bear out the interpretation. Following two years as chief of surgery for the U.S. Navy in Taipei, Taiwan, he spent four years at the Serving in Mission (SIM) Soddo Hospital in Ethiopia. After further surgical studies in the United States, he returned to Soddo for another four years. When political instability in Ethiopia forced him and his family to return to the United States, he practiced for 12 years in general surgery at Central DuPage Hospital outside Chicago while serving in medical missions in Africa, Asia and South America.
The pull of international patients in need was strong, however, and he returned to Africa to serve as chief of surgery at SIM/ELWA Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia. From 1988 until his retirement in 1996, he was chief of surgery at the SIM Galmi Hospital in a region of Niger most affected by AIDS/HIV. He was active in establishing the Pan African College of Christian Surgeons for the training of African Christian physicians in African mission hospitals.
All the while, Bonnie Jo’s support was crucial. She did the bookkeeping for the SIM Soddo Hospital, taught Sunday school, Bible and sewing classes and kept the family a cohesive, loving whole. She home-schooled their two children, David and Carolyn, during the family’s service in Taiwan and Ethiopia (the Adolph children have dedicated their lives to missions and today serve in Africa, David as a veterinary doctor in Kenya and Carolyn as a bush clinic nurse in Ethiopia) and continues to travel with Harold as they present seminars that include “Surgical Challenges of West Africa,” “Plastic Surgery in the Tropics” and “Secret Scourge of African Women – Childbirth Fistula Repair.”
Both Harold and Bonnie Jo, who make their home in Wisconsin, also travel the United States – despite Harold’s recent major surgeries and diminished eyesight – to raise the millions of dollars necessary for the construction of Soddo Christian Hospital in Ethiopia which serves the poorest and most heavily populated area in that African nation. The 120-bed facility opened in January 2005 and has been approved as a surgical training program post for the Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons. More than 90 employees and a visiting expatriate staff provide service.
Dr. Adolph’s honors include the Governor’s Award for distinguished service and dedication to Central DuPage Hospital and developing countries. He and Bonnie Jo received the Servant of Christ Award from Christian Medical Dental Association (CMDA). In 2004, CMDA honored the Adolphs with the Stewart Memorial Lectureship and the same year, they shared honors from Wheaton College and the Alumni for Distinguished Service to Society.
The author of Today’s Decision, Tomorrow’s Destiny and Holyistic Attitudes: God’s Prescription for Your Good Health, Dr. Adolph also works closely with Project MedSend, a Christian agency that helps new doctors in debt get into the mission field. As in his other endeavors, he and Bonnie Jo are a team that plays to win – not for themselves, but for those in need.
Lawrence V. Conway, PhD, FASA
El Salvador, Mexico, South Africa, Zimbabwe, The Philippines. These are among the nations whose poorest citizens have reason to thank Dr. Conway, whose efforts have resulted in both support and recognition for medical missions. As president of The Diller Foundation, he heads the Toledo-based organization named for Toledo reconstructive surgeon James G. Diller MD. Since January 2000, the foundation has shipped about 280 tons of medical materials to nearly 30 countries worldwide without regard to race, religion, nationality or political affiliation.
Dr. Conway, who took his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Illinois and was a scholar at the Graduate School of Banking at the University of Wisconsin, has published numerous books on banking, investment and finance. At The University of Toledo, where he was a professor of finance in the College of Business Administration, he founded the Lawrence V. Conway Business Alumni Affiliate Scholarship and the Lawrence and Ruth Conway Minority Scholarship, the latter for female minority students.
In 2002, he established the Medical Mission Hall of Fame, which honors those individuals and organizations that have made significant and substantial contributions to advancing the medical well-being of people throughout the world. Initially, the Hall of Fame performed its yearly honors without a permanent home, but that changed in 2005, thanks to a bequest Dr. Conway made to The University of Toledo. Now the Center for Creative Education on The University of Toledo Health Science Campus houses the Hall of Fame, which in addition to providing a greater physical presence for the organization allows the display of its resources and access to its archives.
That gift also supports students and faculty from the UT College of Medicine who wish to participate in medical missions. The support dovetails with Dr. Conway’s service as President of the Medical Mission Hall of Fame Foundation, which has as its motto “love in action.”
Among the many honors that Dr. Conway has garnered over the years are the Special Service Award and Distinguished Service Award both from Lutheran Social Services. He is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association. In 2006 and 2007, he won the Jefferson Award, which encourages and honors individuals for outstanding community and public service at the grassroots level. The founding goal of the award was to establish a Nobel Prize for this service.
An Illinois native, Dr. Conway and his wife, Ruth, have one daughter (deceased), two sons and three granddaughters.
James G. Diller, MD, FACS
No one has to tell Dr. Diller about multi-tasking; he was living it long before the term existed. The retired reconstructive surgeon was practicing plastic surgery in Toledo while he was a fellow of both the American College of Surgeons and the American College of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons. Years later, as former president of the Academy of Medicine of Toledo, he didn’t allow a quadruple coronary bypass to halt his work; he began a new career as medical director of several HMOs and PPOs, including Aetna Health Plans and MedChoice. His subsequent fellowship with the American College of Physician Executives and his certification in the American Board of Medical Management were simply a few more steps in a professional journey.
The journey began for the Michigan native with a bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College and medical degree from Ohio State Medical Schools, with specialization at the Institut de Medicin Tropicale in Antwerp, Belgium. He’s quick to point out, however, that what he terms his first career began as a medical missionary in the then-Belgian Congo. His experiences there inspired his later organization of medical mission trips to Haiti, which by 1982, found 80 people working at several Haitian sites and attracted national attention via CBS’s Charles Kuralt.
The Dominican Republic was the next field of operation for Diller’s medical missionaries; since 1990, they’ve been joined during spring break by medical students of the then-Medical College of Ohio, now The University of Toledo College of Medicine. Partnerships with the Solid Rock Mission and other Midwest mission teams resulted in some 50,000 patients seen, 3,500 surgeries performed and 3,000 malnourished children helped by 1998. A school built in 1995 enrolls over 1,000 K-12 students. Even the devastation of Hurricane George in 1998 didn’t stop growth, which most recently is focusing on a new teaching hospital in the poorest sector of the Dominican, with special emphasis on reducing the twin scourges of maternal and infant mortality.
Now a medical consultant, he’s been honored with awards that include the Service to Humanity Award from the Sertoma Club, the Voice of Conscience Award from Aetna and most recently, Health Advocate of the Year 2006 from ProMedica. And, of course, there’s the Diller Foundation, created to provide a more effective international distribution system of medical supplies and equipment to countries that need them most. Diller serves as chairman of the board of directors.
James and his wife, Jean, raised five children and from their home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, are enjoying their seven grandchildren.
Edna Adan Ismail PhD, SRN
Any single profession descriptor would be inadequate to cover the career of Edna Adan Ismail, whose background in nursing and midwifery fueled her involvement in childbirth and child care initiatives worldwide and remained a passion when she accompanied her late husband, the prime minister of Somalia, on state visits to the United States and European nations as First Lady of Somalia. Until 2006, she served as minister of foreign affairs of the Republic of Somaliland, whose officially unrecognized status doesn’t bother her. “I would rather be the minister of foreign affairs of Somaliland than the minister of foreign affairs of some countries. I am proud of Somaliland,” Edna said.
Born in Somalia, she studied in the United Kingdom, where she is a state registered nurse and state registered midwife. She returned to Somalia as the nation’s first qualified nurse-midwife and subsequently became the first female to obtain a senior post in the Civil Service.
Long service in the World Health Organization (WHO) – she served as educator, advisor and regional technical officer for maternal/child health and family planning – culminated in her appointment as WHO representative to the Republic of Djibouti, during which time she also served as president of the United Nations AIDS program. She was a founding member and vice president of the Inter-African Committee for Traditional Practices Affecting Health of Women and Children, subsequently serving as WHO/EMRO regional technical officer for maternal/child health and family planning.
No stranger to the adversity of political upheavals, Edna’s activism led to her detainment and house arrest during Somalia’s military coup. She began building a hospital in Mogadishu; before its completion, Somalia’s civil war broke out and she was forced to leave the country; her property was forcibly occupied by local warlords.
In the early 1990s, she returned to Hargeisa, Somaliland, where from the ground up she built the Edna Adan Maternity Hospital. Lacking the trained nurses necessary to staff the facility, Edna recruited candidates and began training them while the hospital was still under construction. The teaching hospital, which also trains assistant laboratory technicians, graduated its first class of 30 registered nurses in 2003 and its first group of 27 midwives in 2004.
Besides her post in foreign affairs, she also served Somaliland as minister of family welfare and social development, and is president of the Somali Studies International Association and Somaliland: the Organization for Victims of Torture.
She’s been honored with the 2002 AMANITARE Award for Africa as well as being decorated by the Republic of Djibouti with the Commandeur de l’Ordre National du 27 Juin in recognition of the services rendered to the Health Services of Djibouti while she was WHO representative. She remains a frequent international presenter on subjects of female genital mutilation, gender and human rights, and maternal and child health care. She holds an honorary doctor of humane letters from Clark University, Massachusetts.