Alumnus names the Medical Education Center auditorium WITH GIFT OF $1 MILLION
Surgeon John W. Nevins, M.D. '44, is still assisting in a Palm Springs hospital OR where he's worked since 1955.
By Marjorie Roberts
 |
You can do good works, contributing your time, your brains and your enthusiasm; produce progeny who are accomplished and make their own success; or, you can endow a worthy cause by your own means, which legacy can result in the inscription of your name in bricks and mortar to acknowledge this act of generosity. The first and third descriptions rightfully tell the story of John W. Nevins, M.D. '44, who recently pledged and donated $1 million to his alma mater.
"I was a regular giver, but it was always in my mind to contribute a major amount to the College," he explains. "I am very grateful for the degree they gave me and I owe them a lot. I wouldn't have gotten the degree otherwise and I had to give something back." In May Dr. Nevins will celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of his graduation from New York Medical College, then located in New York City. Now his name adorns the soffit over the doors of the auditorium in the Medical Education Center on the Valhalla campus, perhaps to inspire another individual to follow in his charitable footsteps.
Right situation
He selected the auditorium as his namesake because, he says, "It's a place where people meet or hold seminars. It seemed to me to be the right place for the donation to go." Dr. Nevins has this habit of doing the right thing. That must be why he goes to the gym every day, from 2 to 3 hours, weekends included. "Fitness has benefits - 55 benefits and every one of them is important," he advises, without naming any of them.
Dr. Nevins has been practicing at Desert Regional Medical Center ever since he visited Palm Springs and "fell in love with it...Most of my colleagues are retired, but I'm still assisting everybody in the hospital, the only semiretired surgeon still working," he says. Then he clarifies his role as "an assistant [general] surgeon who works every day." In addition, a couple of times a month he volunteers his services at a breast cancer detection clinic.
Earlier flux
As smoothly as the last half-century in Palm Springs was for Dr. Nevins, his formative years were pretty much unstable. He was born in Arizona, where his father was a mining engineer. His housewife mother remarried after the death of his father, and young Nevins was all of 17. He came to New York and struggled to enter undergraduate school; after one year at New York University, the young man switched to Columbia University and graduated in 1942. It was during those years that he settled on medicine.
"During my last year in medical school, I got a job as an extern at the City Hospital on Welfare Island. There was one job and I was the chap to get it," he recalls, an event of obvious significance for him. He was interning at Bridgeport General Hospital in Connecticut when the war in the Pacific caught up with him. Drafted into the Navy, he was by now "semi-interested" in surgery. "I was eager to get a general surgery residency but none was available and I wasn't very happy with that," he admits. "So I took myself to Baltimore for one year in ob/gyn, and followed it with a year of family medicine in a private practice in Toledo, Ohio."
If you don't succeed...
Biding his time for what he really wanted, Dr. Nevins submitted to another residency in otolaryngology and plastic surgery, but at least he was back at Flower-Fifth Avenue Hospitals and in the New York Medical College fold. Finally, with some kind of record for determination, John Nevins, M.D.,
"I am very grateful for the degree they gave me and I owe them a lot. I wouldn't have gotten the degree otherwise and I had to give something back."
began a four-year residency in 1949 at Flower-Fifth and Metropolitan hospitals doing general surgery. But not entirely without complication from Uncle Sam, who sent him a draft notice while he was at Metropolitan, inviting him to spend a year with the Marine Corps in Korea. Upon his release he returned and finished the surgical residency. Though his person is in Palm Springs, where he intends to remain, his heart is often back east at New York Medical College. The university is proud to have been his educational choice, and on behalf of the faculty, staff and students, is grateful for his abundant generosity.