| Departments — In Memoriam | Spring 2008 |
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Oglesby Paul Paul had been chair of what is arguably the School’s most important committee: admissions. From 1977 to 1982, he made decisions that determined the composition of each year’s class—and that eventually influenced the makeup of the hospitals’ house staffs and the HMS faculty. As admissions chair, Paul was a monument of probity and fairness. Each year, he read every one of the more than 1,200 applications submitted to the School and lent his ear to all discussions and his thoughts to all votes. All who worked with him agreed that HMS benefited from his presence. His time at the helm of admissions was not without drama. Paul’s recommendation to discontinue the subcommittee on minority admissions drew considerable public notice: The group had helped HMS achieve one of the more diverse student bodies in U.S. medicine. Paul felt a separate approach was no longer necessary, and he was concerned about the ramifications of recent challenges to admissions policies elsewhere. He also thought the diversity effort at HMS had developed sufficient momentum to sustain itself. His stance was widely misinterpreted, and his plan was thwarted. But his line of argument now seems to reflect what has since occurred throughout the country; in a series of decisions, the Supreme Court has ruled that aspects of affirmative action policies are unconstitutional. Many professional schools have since modified their admissions guidelines. A classic triple threat, Paul attended Harvard College and HMS before taking his postgraduate training at Massachusetts General Hospital. This training was interrupted, however, by World War II and service in the U.S. Navy as a physician aboard the destroyer USS Daly in the Pacific. Paul returned to MGH after the war, serving as clinical fellow, cardiac resident, and assistant to the prominent cardiologist Paul Dudley White, Class of 1908. In 1948, Paul migrated to Chicago to work at what later became Presbyterian–St. Luke’s Hospital. There, his distinguished position in American cardiology took deep hold. As one former colleague noted, “Oley Paul made diagnoses that nobody else could make.” Among the first to study, practice, and teach preventive cardiology, in 1957 Paul led a landmark study of lifestyle and cardiac outcomes, the findings of which set long-held standards for heart-healthy behaviors. Paul also was the principal investigator of the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial, which correlated changes in diet and behavior with improvements in cardiac outcomes. Paul served on the clinical faculty of the University of Illinois, and, in 1963, joined the faculty at Northwestern University’s Passavant Memorial Hospital. In 1977, Paul rejoined HMS to serve as admissions chief and to teach in the Cardiovascular Division at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a position he left in 1986. Paul also served as president of the American Heart Association in 1960 and, from 1964 to 1967, as chairman of the Subspecialty Board on Cardiovascular Disease. Following his retirement, Paul remained active, sharing leadership in fundraising for the renovation of the School’s Countway Library and authoring two books: a warm tribute to White and a probing, sensitive text on Francis Peabody, Class of 1907. In addition, until his last weeks he supported HMS as a dedicated class agent. Paul was predeceased in 1979 by his first wife, Marguerite. In 1981, he married his second wife, Jean, who survives him, as do his son, Rodman; his daughter, Mamie; and three stepchildren, James, Douglas, and Patricia Olive. Daniel D. Federman ’53 is the Carl W. Walter Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Joseph V. Messer ’56 is a professor of medicine at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Photo: Harvard Medical Library in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine |
clinical cardiologist venerated by his patients and peers. He was a pioneer in preventive cardiology before those words were used. And he was a model medical school administrator, a fine intellect committed to creative achievement, and a scholar intent on the common good. On December 22, 2007, cardiology, medical education, and scholarship lost this stellar force; Paul died of heart failure at his home in Westwood, Massachusetts.
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