A Name on the Wall
By Al Timberlane — Good Morning Ozark Journal
Part One of Four: The Heart of Medicine Is the Patient
A. Alfred Taubman’s name, portrait, and dedication plaque at the University of Michigan. Photograph by Al Timberlane. Select to view full size.
The dedication plaque beside Taubman’s portrait. Photograph by Al Timberlane. Select to view full size.
Good morning, everybody. I’m Al Timberlane, and this is Good Morning Ozark Journal—news and entertainment.
For the last week, we’ve been telling stories about the University of Michigan’s teaching hospitals. Today, I want to begin with a name on a wall.
A. Alfred Taubman.
I photographed the gold lettering above his portrait and the plaque beside it. The plaque describes a businessman, humanitarian, and philanthropist whose leadership helped with the design and construction of University Hospital and the building bearing his name.
His contributions extended beyond construction. A gift from Taubman established the university’s Taubman Medical Research Institute in 2007. Its mission reflects his belief that physician-researchers could carry observations from patient care into the laboratory and bring discoveries back to patients.
Think about where that begins: a physician listening to someone whose condition raises an unanswered question.
The University of Michigan is an amazing hospital, to be sure. It is a place of extraordinary knowledge.
Its Medical School opened in 1850. Its first university-owned hospital opened in 1869, with twenty beds in a converted professor’s house. “Old Main” opened in 1925, and its replacement opened in 1986. Generations have built upon what earlier generations learned.
Twenty beds became a great medical institution.
But every bed still holds one person.
Back home in Arkansas, I think about another businessman whose resources became part of a larger public story: Winthrop Rockefeller. His philanthropy supported education and public health, and he served in an advisory role during the development of the University of Arkansas Medical Center.
Those contributions bring me back to the people they were meant to serve.
The worker. The farmer. The musician. The mother raising children. The person trying to get well enough to go home.
Faith, family, and community shape the way I understand that responsibility.
Standing beneath Taubman’s name, I find myself wondering: if he or Rockefeller brought a beloved daughter into a hospital, what would he hope to find?
I cannot answer for either man.
As a father, I would hope for knowledge joined with attention. I would want someone to listen to her history, investigate her present difficulties, and explain how the treatment plan would help her live.
Our daughter, Lori T., is inside that larger story.
She brings years of medical experience that cannot be understood by looking at a building—or by looking at her for a moment.
A name on a wall can preserve the memory of generosity. The patient in the bed gives that generosity a continuing purpose.
What matters most? A name on a wall, or the patient in the bed?
— Al Timberlane
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