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CONTACT Texas Society of Pathologists 401 W. 15th St. Austin, TX 78701 USA (512) 370-1510 (512) 370-1626 fax © Copyright 2001-2005 Texas Society of Pathologists, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
| 2006 Citation of Merit Awardee - Jack L. Titus, M.D., Ph.D. |
Jack L. Titus, MD, PhD was born in South Bend, Indiana, December 7th, 1926. He was one of six children in a family that believed strongly in education; all six children graduated from college.
His father was a banker in South Bend, Indiana; his mother was a homemaker who taught piano, voice and drama. Both were active in church and school affairs.
His wife, Beverly Jean Harden, is a native of South Bend; she was a soloist in high school choir, church choirs, the Studebaker Men’s Chorus of South Bend, and in different women’s organizations. She states that, currently her primary interests are her husband’s career, their children and grandchildren, and their travels together.
After service in the US Army at the end of World War II, he graduated from the University of Notre Dame, B.S. with honors, in 1948. He received his medical degree from Washington University in St. Louis Missouri in 1952, having been elected to Alpha Omega Alpha during his senior year. After completing a rotating internship at Wayne County General Hospital in Eloise, Michigan, Dr. Titus moved to Rensselaer, Indiana where he was a general practitioner for four years.
Desiring to expand his level of medical knowledge, in 1957 Dr. Titus entered the four year pathology-laboratory medicine training program at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, and earned a PhD. Degree in pathology at the University of Minnesota, under the tutelage of Jesse E. Edwards, MD, thus beginning his life-long interest in cardiovascular pathology. Dr. Titus was appointed to the faculty of the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine in 1961, and to Professor in 1972. He also was Coordinator of the Pathology Training Programs at Mayo from 1964 through 1972.
Within his first decade as an academic physician, Dr. Titus published 160 papers, many in the field of cardiovascular pathology. He had achieved such world-renowned stature in that field that he was invited to give the prestigious R. T. Hall Lecture of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand in 1970. Dr. Titus also attracted the attention of Michael E. DeBakey, MD, then president of Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), Houston, Texas. Baylor recruited him to head the BCM Department of Pathology, and in 1972, Dr. Titus was appointed the W. L. Moody Jr. Professor and Chairman of the department, Chief of the Pathology Service of the Methodist Hospital, and pathologist-in-chief of the Harris County Hospital District. He also became senior consultant in pathology in the Department of Pathology of the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Houston, Texas.
When Dr. Titus began his administrative duties at BCM in 1972, the Department of Pathology had 48 full-time faculty members, who performed 1,700 autopsies and evaluated 42,000 surgical specimens, 71,000 cytology specimens, and approximately 8 million clinical tests annually. As he worked to expand the services of the department, Dr. Titus remained active in many other professional endeavors and continued to publish extensively. He served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center (1974-1987), as president of the Houston Society of Clinical Pathologists (1977-1978), as chairman of Education and Research Committee of the Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center (1981-1987), and as a delegate to the House of Delegates of the Texas Society of Pathologists (1984-1986). He participated in the USA-USSR Program in Cardiovascular Disease (1975-1978), was a visiting professor at various institutions both in the United States and abroad, was an invited lecturer at many conferences on cardiac disease worldwide, and served on the editorial boards of the American Heart Journal, the American Journal of Cardiovascular Pathology, and Circulation, among others.
Desiring to focus his activities primarily on cardiovascular pathology, Dr. Titus accepted the position as Director of the Jesse E. Edwards Registry of Cardiovascular Disease at United Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1987. The Registry, which is now housed permanently at the John Nasseff Heart Hospital in St Paul, is a cataloged collection of more than 20,000 human hearts and 85,000 photographic slides that are available for study by local, national and international physicians. Dr. Titus also was appointed professor of pathology at the University of Minnesota Medical School, and continued as adjunct professor of pathology at BCM. He remained active in his field; he participated in the Bypass-Angioplasty Revascularization Investigation (BARI) sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in the late 1990s, and also served on the BARI Morbidity and Mortality Classification Committee. In 1993, Dr. Titus received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society for Cardiovascular Pathology, and the Harland J. Spjut Award for Distinguished Scholarly Achievement from the Houston Society of Clinical Pathologists. He also received a Service to Humanity Award from the United Hospital Foundation in 2004, the year of his retirement.
Dr Titus continues to serve as senior consultant to the Jesse E. Edwards Registry of Cardiovascular Disease. He and his wife Beverly now travel more and visit often with their 5 children, 8 grandchildren, and 3 great-grandchildren.
