A Lifetime of Giving

Dr. John Paris has many fond memories of the years he spent attending UofL's medical school, but one aspect is forever etched on his psyche.

"Every time I walk into the old medical school building, I get the shivers," Paris confesses, only half joking. "The pressure was so intense, we lived in terror the first two years of medical school."

But now, thanks to a generous $500,000 donation from the retired New Albany, Ind., physician, medical students will have a little less stress in their lives-and substantially enhanced educations.

Paris' gift, which also is being made in the name of his late wife, Dorothy, will help establish a human patient simulation center equipped with computer-controlled mannequins. Such state-of-the-art gear offers unsurpassed learning opportunities in an entirely risk-free environment, educators say.

The school has already purchased two of the mannequins, and plans are under way to raise money for the acquisition of four more.

Paris' eyes dance as he makes an admission: Donating money to his old school is preferable to handing tax dollars over to Uncle Sam. That's especially true when the gift will improve training for future physicians.

"Everything I have, I got from being a doctor," says Paris, 85. "This is one way for me give a little something back."

Paris' entire career, in fact, has been devoted to giving back, starting with his acceptance into the military shortly after graduating from UofL in 1941.

"I graduated on the third of June," Paris recalls. "I went to campus the next morning, signed for my diploma and went downtown to the federal building, raised my right hand and became a First Lieutenant in the Medical Corps of the United States Army Reserve."

Six months later, Pearl Harbor was bombed. Paris and the other interns, also members of the medical corps reserve, went en masse down to the federal enlistment office, begging to be shipped out.

When Paris' orders came down, they said "Immediate Action." After stops at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, training in Carlisle, Penn., and a brief holdover at Fort Dix, N.J., those orders took him to active duty in Africa.

Tending the battle-wounded was his first practical medical experience following completion of his internship at Indianapolis City Hospital.

"So that's the way I saw Casablanca," Paris says, laughing dryly to distance the brutal realities of World War II. "And I can tell you with verity that Rick's Café is not at the end of the runway as it's depicted in the movie, 'Casablanca.' The light on the beacon blinks; it doesn't rotate."

Discharged on Jan. 6, 1946, Paris returned home to Dorothy and his hometown of New Albany, a city filled with older doctors who were exhausted by their stateside service during the war and by a recent measles epidemic.

"You've got to get to work," Paris says, recalling the words an old doctor friend told him when he went to visit after arriving back in New Albany. The doctor gave a Paris a syringe filled with medicine and instructed him to make a house call on a child with diphtheria.

"So, I went up on the hill and I gave the kiddie a dose of antiserum," Paris says. "They handed me a $20 bill, and I didn't have any change. I came downtown, told Dot, and we cashed a check at the bank.

"That's the last time we had to cash a check to have money in our pockets."

It also was the beginning of a private practice in New Albany that lasted from 1946 to 1989 and saw more than 4,000 southern Indiana babies delivered. The practice was launched in the Paris family home at 600 E. Main St. The building, constructed in the 1840s, had once been the residence of Dr. John Sloan, first president of the Indiana State Medical Association.

Sloan's old office had been converted by the Parises into a library, and now it was being converted back to accommodate new patients.

"We moved everything out," Paris remembers. "And that was where we started out. In no time, however, we realized we had to have a bigger space, so I built my own office on Spring Street."

Dorothy served as Paris' nurse until, after nine years of marriage, she became pregnant with their first child and took what Paris calls "a 35-year maternity leave."

Their daughter, Marion Marriott, 52, is an associate professor of library sciences in the University of Alabama Graduate School; and their son, John M. Paris III, 50, is a cardiovascular surgeon at St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis.

Dorothy, who later returned during the last five years of her husband's practice to work as office manager, had graduated as a registered nurse from the now-defunct St. Joseph's Infirmary, whose building now provides student housing at the University of Louisville.

Paris says he and his wife used to joke that she and Florence Nightingale were good friends. Dorothy's continued interest in his patients and her loving support helped Paris build a better practice, he says, and it continued to grow through the years.

Soon, New Albany's Spring Street had become a kind of "doctors row," Paris says, with offices for most of the city's 30 doctors, and the physicians eventually concluded that they would all be better off under one roof.

So eight medical doctors, including Paris, two dentists and one contractor got together in 1965 and started construction of the Professional Arts Building, located on State Street.

Paris retains an interest in the facility and, although he no longer sits on the board, still goes in every day to sign checks and keep his hand on the pulse of the operation.

The physician admits he is "immensely proud" of its continuing vitality and modernization. A heliport now sits atop the building, and a pedway connects it to Floyd Memorial Hospital across the street.

Driving through the complex of buildings that make up the hospital, Paris points to the structure that housed Floyd Memorial's first 100 beds when the facility opened in 1953. Paris had a hand in that effort, too, cofounding the institution when it became clear the county had outgrown its only hospital, St. Edward's, in the early 1950s.

"The old hospital bulged at the seams," Paris says, recalling the state of St. Edward's, which had been slated for closure. "We had drive-through deliveries before we knew to call them drive-through deliveries. We had to do something."

Today, that same sense of civic duty continues, as evidenced by Paris' recent philanthropy. His voice fluctuates between humility and quiet pride when he talks about the benefits his donation will bring to UofL medical students.

But his tone softens noticeably when the subject switches to another reason behind his desire to give -- the "59 and a half years of wonderful happiness" he shared with Dorothy, who had been his high school sweetheart and passed away in 1996.

Paris credits the life they shared as the breeding grounds for his generosity, and he notes that the gift to UofL also was made in Dorothy's name.

For Paris, the school's new training center represents more than just a way to give back. It also is a way to continue his life's work -- a way to continue healing.