Wilton Herbert Bunch

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The theme of my last fifty years has been constant change. At graduation, I expected to go into neurosurgery at Mass General, but due to the deaths of my brother from a glioblastoma and my son from epi and subdural hemorrhages as the result of an auto accident, that plan was destroyed. I thought about graduate school in physiology, but no doors opened.

Uncle Sam came along with an offer I could not refuse, and, since there was no war at that time, I ended up on an Indian reservation in Montana. Our orthopaedic consultant was a teacher who took his frustrations out on his students. He kept saying, “when you see the light, I’ll get you an orthopaedic residency.” I finally saw the light and he kept his promise. I attended the University of Minnesota which was the one residency in the country that could be combined with graduate school. Both residency and graduate school profoundly influenced the rest of my life.  

Graduate school was the first time I learned how to think seriously, rather than engage in pattern recognition or matching. The department chairman constantly challenged me to think about assumptions, and I internalized this, practiced it and taught it by constantly questioning assumptions. Residency was very strong in children’s orthopaedics, particularly scoliosis. I made this my clinical career.

I stayed on faculty at the University of Minnesota for six months then was recruited to the University of Virginia. In addition to practice and research, I was medical director of a children’s rehabilitation center and helped to change it from a sleepy nursing home for kids to a full-scale effective rehab experience. I was awarded an endowed chair, the first in any surgical department.

In 1975 I left Virginia to become the founding chairman of the orthopaedic department at Loyola University of Chicago and received the first endowed chair in the university. This was my most productive period. Being chair of a department with no other faculty and absorbing a grossly inadequate residency was a challenge and opportunity like few of us ever imagine. We grew and developed a solid clinical and research base and published four scientific papers per faculty per year. The residents, after a few years, ranked in the top 10% nationally and many medical students flew to Chicago to interview with us and left without feeling the need to visit the other four programs. More than once I reflected on the fact that I could not possibly be accepted into my own program.  

I became interested in medical student education, which hadn’t really changed since Johns Hopkins established the basic format in1896, except for constantly adding more material for the student to learn. Since it is difficult to influence the curriculum as a staff member in an orthopaedic department, I became interested in becoming a dean. I did not have the personality for such a position, but I did not know that at the time.

First, I became dean of medicine at the University of Chicago, which was actually an associate dean position, despite the title. That was absolutely one of the most intellectual places in this country. It was a constant joy and a stimulus to be associated with that caliber of mind, although there is no correlation between intellect and disposition.  

After three years I became dean of the school of medicine at the University of South Florida. As such, I was the first Loma Linda graduate to become dean of a state medical school. That honor did not make up for the fact that it was a troubling and disillusioning time. After a political scuffle, the president, vice-president, department chair, and myself were all fired, and the residency dismantled.  

Before this, I had been president of one national and one international orthopaedic association and held multiple positions in the academy. However, due to the bad press from the fall-out at the University of South Florida, it was hard for me to find a job. I finally accepted a position as medical director of a for-profit rehabilitation company and chief physician of the 100-bed flagship hospital. After two years I said, “if for-profit is the future of medicine, count me out.”

That led to enrollment in a divinity school in Berkeley, California, to study ethics. I enjoyed it, completing all the course work for another doctorate, but I was not convinced that it was worth the language study. I am an ordained priest in the Episcopal church so my plan, then, was to be the pastor of a small congregation in Colorado and ski 150 days a year. But a surgical misadventure two years earlier made it impossible to breathe at 9000 feet and we ended up in Florida for a couple of years of healing.  

My next opportunity was to teach ethics in an interdenominational seminary at Samford University, and I had great fun challenging future evangelical preachers to think about the problems of real life. However, an associate dean was amazingly successful in turning the school into a reformed and fundamentalist place, and I am neither. When he fired me, the president hired me in the philosophy department and I started teaching undergraduates. I really loved those kids and many returned the affection.

At Samford, I also became the leader in establishing a Center for Science and Religion, writing a grant to fund it. The university orchestra was weak in the low strings, so I learned to play the double bass to support the music program.

This year I was asked to teach in the honors program, a class titled, “Introduction to Scientific Inquiry.” It was to include relativity, evolution, and quantum physics, plus whatever else we wanted to teach. Last summer I studied harder than at any time since our first year in medical school. I focused the class on the big question of, “how do we decide something is true?” thinking this would be important for the non-science majors that made up my section. The class went well and I will be teaching it again next year.

In August I was asked to be the interim pastor of a medium-sized church. Two weeks later I discovered there was no cash in the bank and a $200,000 note had to be refinanced in five days. From then until January, I was more of a CEO than a pastor, but we now have cash and a balanced budget, so I can focus on more important things.

My personal life has had difficulties. Vickey became psychotic and died in custodial care (after time with another husband.) In August 1983, my daughter, Brenda, was murdered, leaving us with only a son, Brent. On the bright side, twenty-six years ago, my partner, another pediatric orthopaedist, and I were married and life together has been wonderful.  

On August 8, 2008, Brent and his wife presented us with our first and only grandson, Owen. It seems strange for many of you have grandchildren in or out of college while we have one in diapers.