Dr. Jim Wilson, Former Faculty of the Department
I was born in Jackson at the old Baptist Hospital, and lived in half a dozen small Louisiana and Mississippi towns before returning to Jackson at age 12. I more or less grew up at UMMC (then “UMC”). My mother, Mary Levereault, was a UMMC employee, first as a lab technician in Neurology (for Drs. Currier and Haerer) and later as head of Housekeeping. Dr. Guyton’s son Steve was my classmate at Bailey Junior High School, and as an adolescent I remember going to the Guyton home (which Dr. Guyton designed and built), on Lake HiCo, for swimming parties. Dr. Guyton was already sort of a legend. There was a copy of an early edition of his textbook at the house, plus a second copy that had been translated into Latin, I think by Dr. Guyton.
UMMC was still a small village then. Even as a high school student I was on friendly terms with Dr. Guyton, Dr. Jim Hardy, and Dr. Lane Williams, Chair of Anatomy, for whom I worked in the summers. My older brother, Allan, worked in Physiology for Dr. Fred Sias, as a “keypunch operator”, for the refrigerator-sized PDP-8 computer (Digital Equipment Corporation). This was about 1968, thirteen years after UMMC was founded.
After finishing at Murrah High School I went to Rice University in Houston for three years, and then returned to UMMC for medical school in 1971 (class of ’75). My most vivid memory of my pre-clinical years was of Dr. Guyton standing at the front of the class, supporting part of his weight on his elbow as he drew on the cellophane roller of an overhead projector. Though I may be mistaken, I think he taught the entire M1 physiology class himself. We had a chapter test every day, and my 4th edition of his textbook was highlighted and underlined so thoroughly that nothing actually stood out. After medical school I did internal medicine at Duke, where I “short-tracked” and went to work in a research lab after internship and one year of residency (you could do that then). My two lab years at Duke were unproductive, but I managed to get a research fellowship in rheumatology at the Brigham in Boston. My mentor there, Doug Fearon, was and is one of the most impressive scientists I have known. At 80, he still has an active research lab at Cold Spring Harbor, and continues to do immensely important cancer immunology research. He and I are still in touch and I will visit him at his home in Cape Cod later this year.
After seven years at the Brigham I left as an assistant professor and returned to UMMC, which I had always considered my home. I was recruited to the VA by Stan Chapman, who was VA Chief of Medicine before becoming Chief of Infectious Diseases at UMMC. I ran a wet lab at the VA for about ten years before re-focusing on the genetics component of the Jackson Heart Study, which was just getting started in 2000. A relative lack of firepower in statistical genetics at UMMC turned out to be an advantage—I established collaborations with a number of accomplished scientists at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, which led to a series of successful collaborative R01s. In 2010 I ended my clinical practice and retired from the VA to focus on research full time, as a member of the Department of Physiology at UMMC. In addition to my ongoing JHS-focused research I eventually managed, with tremendous support from Dr. John Hall, to get funding for the Mississippi Center for Clinical and Translational Research, which has recently had a successful funding renewal under Joey Granger’s leadership.
In 2019 I “retired” again, but still had active funding as Co-PI for two projects that are based in the Division of Cardiology at Beth Israel Deaconess in Boston. One of my daughters lives north of Boston, so my wife Jenny and I returned to the north, initially for a year, but as it turns out, permanently. My first week at Beth Israel I walked into a faculty colleague’s office, and there on her desk was a copy of Guyton and Hall’s “Medical Physiology”. I continue to work half time at Beth Israel, essentially all remotely, and we have renewed funding for one of the projects, with a second renewal pending. Jenny and I have renovated a small cottage on Nahant, an island of 3,000 inhabitants 30 minutes north of Boston, that is connected to the “mainland” by a causeway. We are ten minutes’ walk from our daughter and grandson (2 ½ years old), and seven hours drive from my younger daughter and granddaughter (20 months), near Philadelphia. From our deck we have a great view of Boston across the water. Nahant is a lovely place to walk, and I finally have time to go to the gym.
We miss Jackson, which was my life’s home and a wonderful place to raise our children. I am immensely grateful for my association with UMMC, the Jackson Heart Study, and particularly the Department of Physiology, which gave me a superb foundation in medical science, and provided a bridge to my current work. I send my best wishes to the physiology faculty, trainees, and staff, and my respect and gratitude to all those who have gone before.
