Someone who entered the world beset with significant craniofacial deformities and associated hearing loss, Jack E. Sanders’s earliest memories involved hardship and challenge. But Sanders, known in his hometown of Graceville, Florida, as “Dr. Jack,” refused to let physical shortcomings derail his indomitable desire to succeed.

A member of the Miller School’s second graduating class in 1957, Sanders’s perseverance and work ethic allowed him to become the first Miller School alumnus to bestow an endowed chair upon his alma mater. The Bernard J. Fogel, M.D., Endowed Chair in Medical Education was dedicated in October during an event attended by UM President Donna E. Shalala, Miller School Dean Pascal J. Goldschmidt, M.D., and Fogel. Also present was Mark O’Connell, M.D., the Miller School’s senior associate dean for medical education and the recipient of the Fogel Endowed Chair.

Fogel, who served as the medical school’s dean from 1981 to 1995, was flabbergasted by something discovered in Sanders’s last will and testament, after the rural doctor from Florida’s Panhandle passed away July 10, 2004. Sanders posthumously revealed his desire to name an endowed chair after Fogel.

“I could not have been more honored, flattered, and surprised,” Fogel says of the decision. “Jack represented everything the school was founded for in the early 1950s and epitomized the training of bright young men and women to meet the needs of Florida.

“One time I visited Jack in Graceville and made rounds with him,” recalls Fogel, who entered UM’s medical school the same year Sanders graduated. “As he went from patient to patient, I observed an extraordinary scholar and healer.”

Not only was Sanders instrumental in founding Campbellton-Graceville Hospital but he also delivered roughly 1,500 babies over the course of 46 years working as a small-town doctor.

One of his patients was a 5-year-old cousin, Kimberly Register, who’d been bitten by a rattlesnake. Now the city attorney for Sunrise, Register made it to the dedication ceremony for Sanders’s endowed chair.

“I’m alive and walking today because of Dr. Jack,” Register said. “So there’s a lot of emotion—I’m very proud of him.”

Originally from Graceville, which has less than 5,000 people, Sanders attended Emory University and subsequently graduated from the University of Florida School of Pharmacy. An urge to further his medical training via medical school resulted in disappointment: Several institutions turned him away, apparently believing his physical problems might limit his effectiveness as a physician.

Fortunately, the University of Miami’s medical school bucked that discriminatory trend by admitting Sanders.

“That was one of the reasons Jack opted to give us an endowed chair,” Fogel says. “The other was Jack’s faith in the Miller School’s leadership.” Using the Fogel Endowed Chair to support medical education was a fitting move, in Fogel’s estimation.

“When Dean Goldschmidt told me the chair was going to be used to support our leadership in the area of medical education, I couldn’t have been more pleased,” Fogel relates. “Because as Dean Goldschmidt put it: ‘This is exactly what Jack would have wanted.’”