After 60 years, “I’ve never left”

Nicholas Spinelli, a devoted son of Yale, finds that dedication is a two-way street.

In 1941 Nicholas P.R. Spinelli, M.D. ’44, crossed the campus from Yale College, where he had spent his undergraduate years, to begin the next phase of his education at the School of Medicine. Six decades later, he would say, “I’ve never left.”

Born in Stratford, Conn., Spinelli never strayed far from his roots. After service in the Army he returned to his hometown and to Yale, where he completed a residency in internal medicine. He always found time for his alma mater. He taught and counseled medical students, helped them with scholarships and, years later, provided funds for the first White Coat ceremony, which has become an annual event to welcome the first-year class.

In honor of his contributions to the medical school, two rooms were dedicated in Spinelli’s honor on Nov. 20, one at the PVA/EPVA Neuroscience Research Center at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System in West Haven and the other at the medical school.

In his remarks to faculty, students, alumni and his sister Viola Spinelli, who holds an M.P.H. degree from Yale, Spinelli said the school’s mission was to have “bright, brilliant students admitted and matched with bright, brilliant teachers. So I opted to support aid to the dean.”

When Spinelli entered Yale College in 1937, times were lean. His father had lost his contracting business during the Great Depression and later opened a gas station on the Boston Post Road. As a freshman Spinelli waited on tables in the college dining room. As a sophomore he worked in a biology laboratory, where he found a mentor in Edgar J. Boell, a biology professor. “He was determined that I was going to medical school and that I should go to Yale,” Spinelli recalled.

On the night of December 7, 1941, instead of studying for an anatomy exam he was glued to the radio. “FDR came on and told us about Pearl Harbor and that we were at war,” he said. He and his 42 classmates were inducted into the Army as privates first class and had their medical education abbreviated to three years.

After the war, Spinelli practiced internal medicine in Stratford, Conn., until 1958, when heart problems forced him to retire. He became director of medical education at Bridgeport Hospital. In the early 1970s he chaired the medical school Alumni Fund, helping to increase awareness of the financial aid needs of medical students. He also served as president of the Association of Yale Alumni in Medicine (AYAM) from 1981 until 1985, when he was named director of alumni affairs by then-Dean Leon Rosenberg, M.D. Since retiring as director in 1990, Spinelli has remained active in alumni affairs. He received the AYAM’s distinguished alumni service award in 1987 and the Peter Parker Medal in 1994.

“You only get to meet someone like Nick once in a lifetime,” said Stephen G. Waxman, M.D., chair of the Department of Neurology, during the ceremony at the VA. Spinelli, he said, “devoted most of his life to young people and to helping them.”

Later that day came the dedication of The Spinelli Office of Alumni Affairs at 100 Church St. South. Sharon R. McManus, director of alumni affairs, recalled meeting Spinelli in 1985 on her first day on the job at the Yale Alumni Fund for Graduate and Professional Schools. “He said there was nothing better and more gratifying than raising money for Yale,” McManus recalled. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but he really meant it.”

—John Curtis

“It’s like having a mystery story every morning ...”

Drop in on medical grand rounds or morning report and you’re likely to encounter Samuel Kushlan, 89, an enduring representative of the Class of 1935.

Before the advent of antibiotics, chemotherapy, open heart surgery, dialysis or effective treatments for diseases that are easily cured today, Samuel D. Kushlan, M.D. ’35, was ready to follow in the footsteps of the family doctor in New Britain who had inspired him, a man known for his compassion and respect for patients.

Almost seven decades later, Kushlan, who has dedicated his life to Yale and New Haven, was awarded the medical school’s highest honor, the Peter Parker Medal. Kushlan, who celebrated his 89th birthday on Feb. 17, has never retired from medicine. His desire to help students and his curiosity about science make him a familiar figure on campus and particularly in the Department of Internal Medicine, where he attends grand rounds every Thursday and morning medical report nearly every day.

“It’s like having a mystery story every morning. It’s extremely interesting,” he said. “My function, as I see it, is to toss in a pearl from time to time to pay my way.”

As an undergraduate at Yale College, where he was one of the top 10 scholars in the Class of 1932 and a member of the basketball team, Kushlan persuaded then-Dean Milton C. Winternitz, M.D., to admit him to the medical school at age 19. When he graduated three years later, he remembers, “we thought [medicine] was very advanced, but as you look back it was very primitive. It was really very simple-there was nothing you could do for strokes or heart attacks.”

Only four medicines—aspirin, digitalis, phenobarbital and quinine—were commonly used to treat illnesses. And as polio patients flooded the hospital each summer, Kushlan and the house staff hoped that “prayer and good luck” would help them escape the contagion.

A Connecticut native, Kushlan ventured only once from his alma mater, going in 1938 to Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, where he worked under Paul D. White, M.D., a cardiologist to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. “After a short while, I decided the grass was not greener there and when I came back I was content,” he said.

From World War II until the late 1960s, Kushlan practiced internal medicine and gastroenterology in New Haven and taught as a member of the clinical faculty. He served from 1967 until 1982 as associate physician-in-chief at Yale-New Haven Hospital and also as clinical professor of medicine. After retiring from the latter post in 1987, he reviewed cases at Yale’s medical and legal office for the next five years. An active member of the alumni association since 1936, its bequest and endowment officer and a resident of New Haven, “My life is really centered around Yale,” Kushlan said.

The Peter Parker Medal, which Kushlan calls the capstone of his medical career, is named for a 19th century medical missionary to China educated at Yale’s medical and divinity schools. The medal is not the first recognition Kushlan has received at Yale. The Samuel D. Kushlan Lectureship, established 32 years ago, brings some of the best and brightest names in the field of gastroenterology to campus annually.

And about a decade ago, the Department of Internal Medicine named one of its hospital medical services after him, putting him in the same league as Allan Goodyer, Elisha Atkins, John Punnett Peters and Gerald Klatskin. “The other services were named after world-class physicians and I’m a local-class physician. But I was told that teaching and supporting the community for more than 50 years—that’s worth something.”

—Rachel Engers