I just found out that Leonard Tow died on August 10, 2025. In humility, I express my gratitude and respect for his creation of the Tow Foundation, a big part of that being the Humanism in Medicine Award, of which I am one of the many recipients over the years. I hope this great tradition goes on forever, a reminder to doctors, patients, and families of the great rewards and greater responsibilities in medicine.
I thank Dr. Jeanne M. Lackamp, now Chair of the Department of Psychiatry, Psychiatrist in Chief for University Hospitals and Director of the University Hospital Behavioral Health Institute for nominating me and Dr. Jerold Woodhead, Professor Emeritus in Pediatrics at University of Iowa Health Care for placing the pin in my lapel. That was in 2007.
Leonard Tow established the Humanism in Medicine award to foster the development of humanistic doctors. They exemplify compassion and respect for others, humility and empathy.
That is how I will remember Leonard Tow.
On my lapel; in my heartLeonard Tow Humanism in Medicine lapel pinGetting the pin
I was thinking of one of the Johnson County judicial mental health referees I often worked with years ago. L. Jay Stein died in 2014. I looked up his obituary the other day and was a little surprised to find I had written a remembrance for him. I’d forgotten it.
“I will always remember my first encounters with Judge Stein. I was a first-year resident in psychiatry at The University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics. He often presided at mental health commitment hearings at which I was often the nervous trainee providing “expert testimony” as the treating physician. Jay taught me and countless other psychiatry residents about the importance of procedure. His knowledge was prodigious. But it was his compassion, his fairness, and his inimitable sense of humor I will always treasure.”
Judge Stein’s vocabulary was impressive. Even his recorded telephone automatic replies sounded amusingly erudite. Occasionally, when I had a question about legal procedures in mental health I would call him but get his answering machine. These out of office replies were entertaining and sounded very much like the way he did during commitment hearings. I can’t remember all of it, but it began with something like, “Once again, your request has been denied…” It made me think of what I might hear at a parole hearing—not mine of course.
Yesterday, I was thinking about Artie Hicks, one of my old English teachers at Huston-Tillotson University, which was Huston-Tillotson College back in the mid-1970s when I was a student there. I looked him up on the web, just out of curiosity—and found his obituary. That seems to happen a lot lately.
Anyway, he was a gifted teacher and had a great sense of humor. He bought tickets for the whole class to see the movie Harold and Maude, a ground-breaking film in those days. He had a simple and direct approach to talking with students. He always seemed comfortable in a place where white people (including teachers) were the minority—unlike the wider world outside the campus.
He was bald and the students called him Kojak, which was the name of the bald, tough detective star (played by Telly Savalas) of the TV crime drama which aired on CBS from 1973 to 1978.
I think you could have called Artie tough as well; not bad guy tough but honest and direct.
I was thinking about the Clinical Problems in Consultation Psychiatry (CPCP) learning sessions which was introduced to me by one of my first teachers in the University of Iowa Dept of Psychiatry, Dr. William R. (Bill) Yates.
I had originally been thinking of posting one of my own CPCPs that I presented in 2015. It was about the psychosocial adjustment of patients to ostomy.
I searched widely and in vain on the web for any recent information about what Dr. Yates was doing now. I was surprised and saddened to discover his obituary. He died on January 19, 2023 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
As the obituary says:
He served on the faculty at the University of Iowa for Psychiatry and Family Medicine before becoming Professor and Chair of Psychiatry at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine in Tulsa. After retiring, he continued to dedicate his time as a volunteer research psychiatrist at OU and the Laureate Institute for Brain Research where he also served on the board of directors. He authored over 100 scientific manuscripts that were published in peer-reviewed journals.
He was an energetic, a great teacher, had a great sense of humor, and was easy to get along with. He published in many scientific journals and taught many trainees. He was an avid bird watcher and his blog Brain Posts highlighting neuroscience research findings is still visible on the web.
He published the paper along with a chief resident on problem-based learning used on the psychiatry consult-liaison service in 1996, the year I graduated psychiatry residency and joined the faculty at The University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics (Yates, W. R. and T. T. Gerdes (1996). “Problem-based learning in consultation psychiatry.” Gen Hosp Psychiatry 18(3): 139-144.) You can read the abstract for it along with a description of the CPCP at the link above which takes you to my April 19, 2019 blog post “Clinical Problems in Consultation Psychiatry.”
When he was the leader of the psychiatry consult service, we were still using paper charts and his staffing comments were always very brief and encapsulated the assessment and plan succinctly without wasted verbiage—contrasting with my long-winded note.
His remarks about his role at Laureate Institute for Brain Research is still accessible:
“I work part-time as a research psychiatrist for the assessment team at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research. We do research diagnostic assessments for a variety of imaging, genetic and biomarkers studies in mood, anxiety and other brain disorders. I also provide review and analysis of neuroscience research on my blog Brain Posts that can be found at www.brainposts.blogspot.com. You can follow me on Twitter @WRY999. I also use my blog and Twitter feed to share my bird photography images.”
I respected and admired Dr. Yates, as I’m sure many learners did. I will always remember Bill as a gifted scientist and teacher.
I think a fitting tribute would be to go ahead and post my CPCP on the psychosocial adjustment of patients with ostomy. One of the most interesting articles in the bibliography is how the mindfulness meditation approach to that adjustment can be very helpful. The website United Ostomy Association of America website is also informative.
The presentation is also limited to a dozen slides. I often encouraged learners to keep the number of slides to a managed number so the presentations wouldn’t run too long. I called my slide sets the Dirty Dozens.
Many thanks to Dr. William R. Yates and my condolences to his family.
I recently found the obituary of my mentor, Dr. Russell Noyes, Jr. MD. He died on June 21, 2023. This is the first time I’ve ever said that he was my mentor. I probably just didn’t realize it until I found out he passed.
Dr. Noyes was my teacher during the time I was learning consultation-liaison psychiatry back in the 1990s at The University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics. His knowledge was vast. He contributed greatly to the scientific literature on anxiety disorders. He also wrote about near death experiences.
Dr. Noyes retired in 2002. As his students, we chipped in to get him a retirement gift. It was a large bookstand. We were just a little uncertain about whether a bookstand was the right gift for someone who was a tireless researcher and teacher. He was also an avid gardener and musician. He soon returned to work in the department, staffing the outpatient clinic. He also continued to regularly attend grand rounds and research rounds. Years later at a grand rounds meeting, someone asked him about his retirement. Dr. Noyes retorted, “I don’t believe in retirement.”
I remember I could hardly wait to retire. Since then, I’ve been ambivalent about retirement, but not so much that I ever seriously considered returning to work. I sometimes have dreams about being late for college lectures because I can’t find my way to them. A couple of times lately, I’ve had dreams about not being able to find my way through a hospital to conduct a consultation evaluation. I don’t know what that means.
I was an avid student of consultation-liaison psychiatry but I was not a scientist. That was part of the reason I left the university in 2005 for a position in a private practice psychiatry clinic. He cried at the going away party my students and co-workers held for me. I still have a little book in which well-wishers wrote kind messages. Dr. Noyes’ note was:
“Jim
We’re going to miss you. You are the consummate consultation-liaison psychiatrist and your leaving is a great loss to the Department. We wish you the best and hope to see you at the Academy meetings.
Russ”
His sentiment was one of the main reasons I soon returned to the department, only to leave again a few years later—and return again after a very short time. I came back because he was a consummate teacher and I wanted to learn more from this beacon of wisdom.
Many who knew him, including me, often saw him riding a bicycle on Melrose Avenue to and from work at the hospital. We wondered why he didn’t drive instead. His son James wrote a beautiful remembrance of him and posted it on the web in 2006. It’s entitled “My Dad (Russell Noyes, Jr).”
James says his dad was a terrible driver. This triggered a memory of how it was Russ’s wife, Martie, who drove the rental car when we rode with them from the airport to the hotel where an Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry meeting was to be held. I remember gripping the armrest and wishing we’d hired a taxi as Martie steered erratically through heavy traffic.
Dr. Noyes knew how to guide his learners through their careers. He also knew how to write and was a stern editor. Even as I wrote this remembrance, I could see how he might have critiqued it. I tried to do it on my own, and of course I failed. It will have to do.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 