Professor of Pathology, Indiana University School of Medicine
Passed by the IUPUI Faculty Council at their meeting on February 20, 2007.
Jesse Donald Hubbard was born in Switzerland County, Indiana in 1920. He grew up in time to serve in the Air Force during WW II. He earned a bachelor degree from DePauw University and later a medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1951. He remained in Baltimore, Maryland and completed two years of pathology residency training at Union Memorial Hospital prior to moving to Indianapolis and finishing two more years of pathology residency at the Indiana University School of Medicine.
Dr. Hubbard became a faculty member in the Department of Pathology in 1958, under the chairmanship of Dr. Edward Smith. This was one of the golden eras for the department, in which Dr. Smith and others who had come from Washington University in St. Louis led the department into the forefront of pathology. The department was the home of the American Board of Pathology and the American Journal of Clinical Pathology. Faculty headed national organizations in pathology, and others achieved national acclaim for expertise in diagnostic surgical pathology and the emerging field of cytology.
As occasionally happens in academic departments when an outstanding chairman is replaced, things fell apart. Dr. Smith left Indiana University in 1962, and by the end of that decade many of the old and newly recruited faculty had gone elsewhere as well. Dr. Hubbard remained. He held down the fort nearly single-handedly, performing the diagnostic work on surgical specimens and autopsy cases as well as teaching the pathology courses for medical students, dental students, and allied health students. As the department was rebuilt under the chairmanship of Dr. Joshua Edwards, Dr. Hubbard served as deputy chairman.
He then was able to focus his efforts in medical education. For many years he served as course director for the two major pathology courses for medical students given in the sophomore year: General Pathology (C603) and Systemic Pathology (C604). This work entailed coordinating the lecture schedule and creating hands on laboratory experiences for over 200 students – no mean feat. Dr. Hubbard maintained and built up the department’s collection of formalin fixed autopsy teaching specimens for use in the student labs. A major part of the medical student lab exercises consisted of autopsy case studies in which pairs of students were presented with a patient’s case history, autopsy organs, and microscopic slides of the organs. After an hour or so work on their own, the students reviewed the history with family practice faculty and then reviewed the gross organs and slides with one of the pathology faculty members or residents. These case studies gave students a chance to practice making correlations between the history and physical exam, the course of the patient’s disease and therapy, and what the body might reveal at autopsy. Creating and maintaining the collection of these cases and other tissues and slides for the laboratory was a tremendous job that Dr. Hubbard performed with meticulous care to detail.
Dr. Hubbard was also course director for Pathology for Dental Students (C607). This course was given annually to about 100 sophomore dental students. Dr. Hubbard gave nearly all the lectures and also provided weekly laboratory exercises with the assistance of some pathology faculty and residents. He continued teaching the dental school course for years after others began to serve as course director for the medical student offerings, so that decades of dentists trained in Indiana have distinct and fond memories of Dr. Hubbard. For dental students, Dr. Hubbard’s course in general pathology was their first real exposure to the complex, fascinating, and sometimes intimidating world of disease. Thus, both the topic and the man had a profound and lasting impact on generations of dentists practicing in Indiana and elsewhere.
In lectures and laboratory settings Dr. Hubbard had high expectations of his students. Though there were hundreds of them each year, he knew their names. He demanded active participation on the part of each one, and sometimes used props such as a hammer and a hook to encourage their enthusiasm for the subject matter. He was not one to be rushed through a cursory examination of the topic of the day, and many students recall how he would fill a large chalkboard with abundant information and proceed to pull it all together into a unified story. In honor of his hard work and skill in the classroom, Professor Hubbard received the President’s Award at the IU Founders Day event on April 17, 1985. He also was awarded the Golden Apple Award for teaching excellence by the Indiana University School of Medicine Alumni Association in both 1984 and 1991.
Dr. Hubbard was a quiet man with a mind and a way of his own. He never failed to appear at work on time, even in blizzards that others viewed as a marvelous excuse to stay home, he put on his great galoshes and trudged in. In better weather he was a well known sight pedaling his bicycle at a genteel pace to make the 11 mile round trip to work. His figure sat upright on his fat-tired girl’s model purple bike with metal baskets on each side of the back wheel. He would stop to pick up aluminum and steel cans, putting them in shopping bags in the baskets. He estimated that he had ridden 30,000 miles to get to work during his tenure – more than enough to have circumnavigated the globe. His family reports that he invested the proceeds from selling the cans he picked up in railroad stocks, and that their worth grew to over $10,000.
When Dr. Hubbard became professor emeritus and ended his active teaching career in 1990, he left the building and essentially was never seen on campus again. Unlike some other faculty retirees who revisit the halls of the department with great frequency, Dr. Hubbard simply left - refusing even to attend his own retirement party. It was fortunate that he did choose to attend a luncheon for pathology faculty retirees in September 2006, an occasion that gave his colleagues a chance to see him rosy cheeked, bright, smiling, and only slightly diminished from the way we remembered him. Unfortunately, only one month later he was killed in a motor vehicle accident while visiting relatives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Dr. Hubbard had a long and worthy career on the faculty, serving 44 years and enlightening thousands of students as to the nature of human diseases. His dedication and the joy he took in teaching, and what that imparted to learning, made him a model for us all to emulate. He is remembered by his students, missed by his colleagues, and lives on in the hearts of his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and other family members.
Be it resolved that this memorial resolution be presented to the Faculty Council of Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis and that copies be sent to his brother, John Stanley (Jo) Hubbard, and his children, Joe Hubbard, Debra Joan Mathew, and Jean D. Cobb.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED BY:
Kathleen Warfel Hull, MD
Professor emerita of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
John Pless, MD
Professor emeritus of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Lawrence Goldblatt, DDS
Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology and Dean, IU School of Dentistry
James W. Smith, MD
Professor emeritus of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine