|
 Jay
Douglass ’00 has a lot of reasons to smile these days. Not
only is he getting married this summer, but he has also been accepted
into medical school at Oregon Health and Sciences University (OHSU).
It is a happy ending to a difficult chapter in his life –
one that began with the sudden death of his father, Dr. George Douglass
’63, less than a week before Douglass’ graduation.
“That rocked my world,” he says, recalling that he
had spoken with his father at a track meet only days before his
death. “It was really weird to have graduation so close after
he passed away because there were so many feelings and emotions.”
Even though his future plans for medical school were suddenly
cast in doubt, Douglass remained deter-mined to stay involved in
medicine. He reconnected with a Portland, Ore., physician and family
friend, Dr. Gregg Wood, who volunteers at the Old Town Medical Clinic,
which serves the city’s homeless and poor. Wood is legally
blind and relies on Douglass to read medical charts and be his eyes
while the elderly physician works with patients. “We have
a symbiotic relationship,” says Douglass. “He likes
to play good cop, bad cop. I’m usually the bad cop because
I have the patient chart and two-thirds of our patients typically
aren’t making choices that people might consider wise.”
At the same time, Douglass is a clini-cal research coordinator
for Allergy Associates Research Center, one of the more prominent
allergy and asthma research practices in the Pacific Northwest.
He is responsible for coordinating patient recruitment, recording
medical histories and set-ting up research trials of new asthma
and allergy treatments. “I think the experience has shown
me that I enjoy working with patients and that I really do want
to be a physician.”
By entering OHSU this fall, Douglass is the last of three brothers
to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a physician.
“My family’s not very creative,” he jokes. “My
father played football and became a physician. My oldest brother
played football and became a physician, and my middle brother played
football and became a physician.”
Douglass may be following the fam-ily tradition but he has always
forged his own path. Throughout his life, however, his parents’
support has never been far behind. “My father once said, ‘however
far you want to take your education, we’ll be there to support
you.’”
Despite the sudden loss of his father, Douglass feels he has led
a charmed life and wants to pass his good for-tune along to others.
For the past two years he has given to Willamette’s Annual
Fund – an unusual choice for someone his age. “I give
as a way to say thank you to Willamette because it was an important
place both for me and my family.”
No doubt his father would agree.
– Brad Millay ’97
|
