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30 May 5 • 2016
Teaching From
The Heart
PHOTO COURTESY OF MONNI MUST
Cap & Gown
YEARBOOK
metro »
Dr. George Mogill to
receive WSU lifetime
achievement citation.
Andrea Westfall | Special to the Jewish News
G
eorge Mogill, M.D., class
of 1942, may never hang
up his stethoscope, at least
symbolically.
The Wayne State University School
of Medicine in Detroit will honor the
98-year-old alumnus with a one-time
Lifetime Achievement Citation for his
loyalty and commitment to the school,
the field of medicine, and the teaching
and mentoring of medical students and
residents.
The citation will be presented by WSU
School of Medicine Dean Jack D. Sobel,
M.D., at the Medical Alumni Reunion
Day lunch program May 14 in Scott Hall.
“I am exceedingly honored,” the
Bloomfield Hills resident said. “Medicine
was and is my life, along with my family.”
Mogill is a retired family medi-
cine physician affiliated with William
Beaumont Hospital. He received his
bachelor’s degree in biological sci-
ences from WSU in 1937. He graduated
from the Wayne University College of
Medicine in 1942, completed a one-year
surgery internship and then joined the
U.S. Army Medical Corps in 1943.
He landed in Normandy four days
after D-Day, caring for patients in the
Army’s 8th Field Hospital in France and
Germany. He moved home to complete
his residency when the war ended.
“Jewish doctors were not welcome
at many hospitals in the area. Grace
Hospital in the medical center gave me a
home. They gave me privileges as a gen-
eral practitioner,” he said.
He opened his Detroit office on
Second Avenue between Peterboro and
Charlotte streets, near the Masonic
Temple, and rounded at Grace in the
morning and at lunch, seeing 30 to 40
patients a day. He refused to segregate,
becoming the third doctor in Detroit to
have office hours where patients of all
colors sat in the same room on the same
day.
He moved his practice to Royal Oak
for a time before returning to a WSU-
affiliated medical school clinic to secure
the school’s family medicine residency.
He joined the School of Medicine’s fac-
ulty in 1972 as a clinical instructor in the
Department of Family Medicine.
Mogill taught throughout the
1990s and into the 21st century. WSU
Department of Family Medicine Chair
and Professor Tsveti Markova, M.D.,
met him in 2001 when she became the
Family Medicine residency program
director for Sinai-Grace Hospital. “He
taught the heart of medicine,” she said.
Mogill was chief of the Department
of Family Practice at Harper-Grace
Hospital from 1977 to 1984 and later
at Sinai-Grace Hospital. Among his
honors, he is a lifetime member and
former board member of the School of
Medicine Alumni Association. In addi-
tion, the George Mogill, M.D., Endowed
Award for Family Medicine — a gift to
the school established in 2000 by his
former patient— is presented annually
during Match Day to a graduating senior
committed to specializing in family
medicine.
Class of 2017 medical student Dana
Sugar credits Mogill for affecting her
decision to become a physician. Sugar’s
sister, Liza, is married to Mogill’s grand-
son Jonathan Lauter, M.D., a pediatrician
who graduated from the WSU School of
Medicine in 2008.
Sugar — who described Mogill as a
“strong, stubborn and very sweet man”
— considered becoming a physician’s
assistant instead of a doctor for a few
years.
“He was ruthless and adamant in his
conviction that I should choose M.D.,”
she said. “It became a conversation we
would debate nearly every time we saw
each other.”
He even cornered her at synagogue.
“It was at the aufruf before Jon and my
sister Liza’s wedding. This is the religious
service held on the Shabbat before the
wedding. It was a long service at a con-
servative shul. George was in front of
me in the synagogue, and he would turn
around in between prayers to convince
me to go to medical school. I kid you
not. There was no escaping this conver-
sation; we were in shul!” she said.
Mogill and wife, Irma, who died in
2012, have three children, eight grand-
children and five great-grandchildren.
*
Andrea Westfall is in public affairs for WSU
School of Medicine.