President James T. Willerson:
I don’t plan to say Farewell (continued)

By Darla Brown

You have an incredible work ethic – the first person to arrive in the morning and the last one to leave. Will you have an easier schedule at Texas Heart? What are your goals and plans in that role?

I don’t view what I do as work. I love every opportunity I have, including the opportunity to teach, which I continue to do on a daily basis; be involved in research, which I also continue to do in stem cell work; and to take care of patients, which I do on a daily basis. This is not work; it is an incredible opportunity to help others. In addition to working to try to help the UT Health Science Center at Houston, the UT System, and the Texas Medical Center, I will devote my heart and my energies to the Texas Heart Institute and do everything I can to build its pre-eminence worldwide, hopefully in collaboration with The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and its schools. I want the Texas Heart Institute to move from a top 10 ranking we have enjoyed for some time to the pre-eminent position. It’s a great gift to Houston, Texas, and the Texas Medical Center, and it is a collaborative effort with all of the Texas Medical Center institutions.

Tell us about how you met Dr. Denton Cooley. Are you following the footsteps of your mentor?

When I was sophomore in high school in San Antonio, my parents, both of whom were doctors in individual private practice, my mother an anesthesiologist and my father a general practitioner, said to me on one Saturday evening in the spring, “You are going to the airport tomorrow – Sunday – to meet a very famous heart surgeon from Houston, who has just done his 10,000th operation at the Texas Heart Institute/St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital.”

I had already stated my firm intention to become a doctor based upon the enjoyment and personal satisfaction I saw in my parents as they helped patients. But, this command surprised me. I said something to my parents like, “This is the silliest thing I ever heard of. Why would he want to meet me?” Their response was direct, “You’re going. Get ready.” And overnight and early the next morning, nothing I could say or do would change it. I was put into a station wagon that morning with four San Antonio doctors, none of whom I knew, but who were known to my parents. And we drove to the airport to pick up Dr. Denton Cooley. One of the doctors seemed to know him better than the others and went out to greet him on the tarmac with a beverage for him. Dr. Cooley got into the station wagon, and we drove back to this doctor’s home.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next, but Dr. Cooley made it easy by putting his arm around me and taking me aside. I thought this was going to be the shortest meeting in history, but it wasn’t.

He spent some 30 minutes with me – he asked me about my future plans, what I had done to date of any merit, and at the end of that discussion, he said, “I want to help you, and I want you to go to the Johns Hopkins University and School of Medicine combined undergraduate medical school program.”

At that stage, I didn’t really want to leave Texas – I was swimming competitively in San Antonio and doing reasonably well. I went to The University of Texas at Austin on a swimming scholarship, and I competed and swam and pursued a pre-medical education. It was almost identical to what Dr. Denton Cooley had done, the only difference being he played on the basketball team. The rest of our careers at UT-Austin were similar, he and I were both members of the UT Cowboys, we lettered on our respective teams, and we did reasonably well academically.

When I came to Baylor Medical School at Houston, he was a member of the faculty, having joined Dr. DeBakey earlier and now, having started the Texas Heart Institute. We renewed our acquaintance, and I spent my sophomore year of my medical school summer working in Dr. Cooley’s operating rooms, helping with the surgeries best I could, accompanying him on rounds from very early in the morning to very late at night. My earlier introduction to him now became a very strong admiration for him as a surgeon, builder, educator, a leader. While I was a senior at Baylor College of Medicine, Dr. Cooley operated on my father at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital. He was very supportive and pleased about the fact that I was accepted into a medical internship at the Massachusetts General Hospital at Harvard. Three years later, when my mother was dying of cancer, I sought his advice about her problem. I returned to Texas in 1972 after spending almost six years at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and two years at the National Institutes of Health, and he was pleased that I was returning to Texas.

In 1989, when I was being offered the position of chairman of Internal Medicine at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, he and a young Dr. Bud Frazier entered that attempt to recruit me, asking if I would simultaneously be the director of cardiology research at the Texas Heart Institute. It made a great difference to me in considering the move to Houston, and I accepted the offers. In more recent years, we have worked more closely in the care of patients, in legally affiliating the Texas Heart Institute with The University of Texas System, and attempting to build collaborations within the Texas Medical Center. In 2004, he and the chairman of the THI board, the CEO of St. Luke’s Hospital, and the chairman of the St. Luke’s board asked me to follow him as president of the Texas Heart Institute. I believed that it was premature for me to leave the UT Health Science Center at Houston at that time because I made many promises, especially to the people of Houston related to their philanthropic support of our efforts and had not yet kept them. I shared this with them, and they decided that I should be president-elect and become president when the time came that I had kept the commitments that I had made related to building The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston to its present position. In late 2006, I began the discussions with UT System leadership to find a replacement for me.

In November 2007, the search started, and now Dr. Larry Kaiser has been appointed the new president as of Aug. 1, 2008. Therefore on Aug. 1, 2008, I will be president of Texas Heart Institute, and I expect to remain a professor at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and continue to help as an educator, clinician, scientist, and adviser wherever helpful and to build collaborative programs between the Texas Heart Institute, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and the UT System. I am very appreciative of this opportunity.

What advice do you have for the incoming president, Dr. Larry Kaiser?

I do not wish to offer advice to incoming President Dr. Larry Kaiser. Rather, I would say that it is certainly my hope that he will work closely with the outstanding leaders we have recruited at The University of Texas Health Science Center and the deans at each of the schools. I believe we have an outstanding group of leaders. I believe we have built most of the structural resources that will be needed for the near future, raised money, and recruited well so that it should allow us to move from “poised for greatness” to that in fact occurring at all six schools. I believe he will do an outstanding job and appreciate his willingness to follow me and continue building the Health Science Center in every way. I will help him in any way he may ask in the future and wish him the very best in this endeavor.