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| Volume 49, Number 2, Summer 2000 |
Philip Elton Gunby (NASW member since 1968) who died on May 21, 2000, just nine days short of his 68th birthday, played a major role in American Medical Association (AMA) publications for nearly 33 years. He retired in May 1997 as director of the Division of Medical News and Humanities, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), but continued to write a quarterly column and occasional other articles for the Medical News & Perspectives (MN&P) section.
After graduating from Michigan State University in East Lansing and starting his journalism career as a reporter with the Associated Press in Columbus, OH, for eight years, Phil and his wife, Mary Ellen, moved in late 1964 to Evanston, IL, from which he would spend the next third of a century commuting to AMA headquarters in Chicago. His first position at the association was with AMA News, but he is perhaps best remembered for his work as a reporter and then as editor for 13 years of MN&P.
In the course of his career, Phil won awards for medical writing from many organizations, such as the American Medical Writers Association, American Heart Association, Radiological Society of North America. He was a member of the Sigma Delta Chi professional journalism society and taught medical journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and other local institutions.
A quintessential "people person," Phil made and kept hundreds of friends during every stage of his life. He was the one who organized reunions of his Lockport (NY) Senior High School graduating class and the relative who tracked down far-flung members of the Gunby clan in Canada, England, Norway, and elsewhere in the world. M. Therese Southgate, M.D., who was deputy editor of JAMA during much of his tenure, recalls that in an era rampant with competition and ambition "Phil was the glue that held people together."
And he kept abreast of everything at all newsworthy. "Phil Gunby was the eyes and ears of the world to me. If anything happened in the world and I didn't hear from Phil, I knew it was not important," George Lundberg, M.D., former editor of JAMA, said recently, adding, "I put him in charge of the whole front part of the Journal."
Phil's devotion to and interest in international medical matters did not end at the office door. Throughout the years, he and his wife opened their hearts and their home to several physicians from abroad who spent time working at JAMA. In addition, his work allowed him to nurture a love of travel-combined with an alliance with the military-that began when the US Air Force sent him to France for a time in the 1960s. He rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Illinois Air National Guard, from which he retired in 1985. On JAMA assignments overseas, he cultivated relationships with members of the international medical community that continually proved helpful to the Journal.
Friendships he developed with the surgeons general of the Army, Navy, and Air Force (including current AMA head E. Ratcliffe Anderson, M.D., a former Air Force surgeon general) enabled Phil to be JAMA's front-line reporter on the medical aspects of the conflicts in the Persian Gulf and the former Yugoslavia. Closer to home, he initiated and for a decade arranged an annual JAMA dinner for these military medical chiefs in conjunction with the AMA annual meeting.
A dedicated family man as well as an intrepid newshound, Phil cherished the time he spent in such pursuits as riding a tandem bicycle with his wife (affectionately known as Wig from the days when she was tennis champion Mary Ellen Wigman) or decorating an Easter-egg tree at their Evanston home with his three children, Cathy Gunby Vaughn, R.N., Mark Gunby, M.D., and Craig Gunby, their spouses, and six grandchildren. The Gunbys retired to Oklahoma in 1997.
(Source: JAMA obituary by Marsha F. Goldsmith.Reprint with permission.)
David Russell Branch (NASW member since 1964) died in Boca Raton, FL in March following a brief illness. He was 67.
Branch retired in January 1998 as southeast bureau chief for the International Medical News Group of Rockland, MD after a 30-year career as a medical writer. He continued to do freelance writing for IMNG, Reuters, Medical Education Network of Canada, and other clients until he was diagnosed in September with the recurrence of melanoma first discovered in 1993.
Branch, who was born in Middletown, OH, received his bachelor's degree from Miami University in Oxford, OH, and his master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He served in the U.S. Army from 1953 through 1955, and in 1958, began his newspaper career at the St. Petersburg Times.
Active in public and political affairs, Branch served as commissioner of schools in Rochester, NY, from 1969 through 1971, and as president of that board in 1971. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1972 and 1974 and to the Florida Democratic Convention in 1992.
Over the years, Branch ran hundreds of miles in competitive road races and collected dozens of trophies. In 1996, at the age of 63, he won first place in his age group in a seven-mile race.
Branch is survived by his wife of 39 years, Robin Barrell Branch of Boca Raton, a former Sun-Sentinel editor and Palm Beach County columnist.
(Source: Sun-Sentinel obituary)
For ten years, Lorri Preston was the voice of Emory University medicine. Preston, 39, died in July of an undiagnosed brain tumor. She had been an NASW member since 1997.
"Most of what was known by the public about Emory medicine, public health, and nursing for the decade of the 1990s came through the voice of Lorri Preston," said Dr. Sylvia Wrobel, assistant vice president for health sciences communications at Emory.
Preston started at Emory in 1989 and rose to be assistant director of media relations for the health sciences communications department. She left in October 1999 to work for the American Cancer Society as director of medical and scientific communications and was later named managing editor of the American Cancer Society News Today, an online magazine.
Her work with Emory and ACS always focused on the people it affected.
"She loved her work because she was very intellectually curious and wanted to do good and help people," Dr. Wrobel said. "She loved the fact that she was getting health news out to the pubic."
Preston started her career as an intern for the U.S. Olympic Committee in Colorado Springs, CO, opening a news bureau at the Olympic training center in Lake Placid, NY, during the 1983-84 Winter Olympic trials. Her work as an intern landed her a full-time position as a public information officer.
A native of Bridgeport, CT, Preston was a graduate of Marietta's Walton High School where she played on the school's soccer team as the only girl. She was captain of the women's soccer team at the University of Georgia, where she graduated with a degree in journalism. While at Emory, she received her master's of public health degree in epidemiology.
(Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
ScienceWriters has also learned of the death of Anthony Broy, a freelance from Elmhurst, NY. He had been an NASW member since 1975.