Notes

1940s
Robert W. Frelick, M.D. ’44, of Wilmington, Del., liaison to the National Cancer Advisory Board for the Association of Community Cancer Centers, received the Christiana Care Health System’s annual commendation for excellence in October. The award recognizes a current or former member of the medical-dental staff of Christiana, Delaware’s largest health care provider, for outstanding clinical care and compassion and for distinguished achievement in education, research, community service or leadership. Frelick, a medical oncologist since the specialty’s earliest days, was honored for more than five decades of service and leadership. Frelick and his wife, Jane, met while he was in medical school and she was a nursing student at Yale.

2003-2004

Association of Yale Alumni in Medicine

Robert H. Furman, M.D. ’43, FW ’45, writes to say: “We’re enjoying retirement at La Posada, a continuing care retirement community in Green Valley, Ariz.” Furman attends a medical journal club and weekly grand rounds at the University of Arizona School of Medicine. He also participates in a weekly lecture series called “The Forum at La Posada.”

Roslyn L. MacNish, M.P.H. ’41, of Wethersfield, Conn., is retired and enjoying photography and attending camera clubs and councils. During her career MacNish was a statistician in public health at the Hartford Hospital Tumor Clinic and for the state of Connecticut’s tuberculosis control program.

1950s

Eva Henriksen, M.D. ’54, writes to say that “in Los Angeles, I quilt, visit with daughter Liz and granddaughters Ryann, 8, and Addison, 5, and e-mail daughter Mary, who with husband Reggis has been in South Africa, Thailand and Australia as part of an around-the-world tour. I do anesthesia consultations on operating room-related deaths for the LA coroner’s office.”

1960s

Robert L. Johnson, M.D., HS ’64, clinical professor of otolaryngology at the University of California, San Francisco, for more than 30 years, writes to say that “almost 40 years have passed since I was an otolaryngology resident at Yale. Married for 42 years to Barbara, a staff pediatric nurse, with three adult children all living in the Bay area. My younger daughter recently received her doctorate in psychology. My wife and I returned from Thailand, Bhutan and Laos, where I gave lectures on sinusitis.”

1970s

Ian B. Berger, M.D., M.P.H. ’74, is president of Houston-based InFOCUS, a nonprofit organization promoting eye care for all, and director of the InFOCUS Center for Primary Eye Care Development, whose domestic programs in poor and rural areas provide eye care for migrant farm workers, Native Americans and other populations in need. InFOCUS has promoted a new paradigm, the Vision Station, to deliver primary eye care. Berger, with colleague Larry Spitzberg, Ph.D., O.D., has also created the Focometer, a hand-held refracting instrument that measures visual errors and determines prescriptions. It was designed for use in remote or poor areas and is used in 40 countries.

1980s

Robert S.D. Higgins, M.D. ’85, the Mary and John Bent Chair of Cardiovascular-Thoracic Surgery at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center, was honored as a leader in public health and medicine by the Gift of Hope Organ & Tissue Donor Network and its African American Task Force at a ceremony in Chicago in November. Higgins was honored for establishing a standard of excellence, improving the health of communities and supporting efforts to save and improve lives through organ and tissue donation.

Marie (Ciacco) Tsivitis, M.P.H. ’86, staff associate at the Long Island State Veterans Home in Stony Brook, N.Y., is teaching a new course titled “Issues in Public Health” at Stony Brook University as an adjunct staff associate in infection control. Tsivitis also writes that she and her husband have two children, Alexandra, 8, and Christopher, 4.

1990s

Liselotte Pieroth-Vinals and Antonio Vinals

Antonio F. Vinals, M.D. ’93, writes to say that he and his wife, Liselotte Pieroth-Vinals, M.D., are enjoying living in Manhattan. Vinals is an ophthalmologist at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital. He and Pieroth met at Yale in 1992. She was a visiting international medical student and intern at Yale and completed her ophthalmology training at Columbia University and a fellowship in oculoplastic surgery at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, where she is now on the staff. They are the proud parents of Matilde Beatrix, who was born at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital on December 12 and weighed seven pounds.

Send alumni news items to Claire M. Bessinger, Yale Medicine Publications, P.O. Box 7612, New Haven, CT 06519-0612, or via e-mail to claire.bessinger@yale.edu.