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FEATURE

For eight years in the 1970s, while on the faculty at the Medical School, my office address was 7703 Floyd
Curl Drive and for that entire time no one could tell me who Floyd Curl was. Finally, with the help of the
archivist of the Health Science Center Library, the mystery was solved. The Rev. Floyd Curl was a Methodist
minister and, in his capacity as executive secretary of the Southwest Texas Conference, he presided over the first
meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Methodist Hospital on Jan. 24, 1955. When that building was completed,
it faced the only existing road within the proposed Medical Center, and the Board decided to name that street
for him.

A few of the streets in the Medical Center are named for internationally prominent scientists such as Louis
Pasteur, who helped to develop germ theory and gave us the term pasteurization, and Jonas Salk, who developed
the first polio vaccine. But most of the street names honor men whose efforts helped create the beginnings of the
South Texas Medical Center.

John Smith Drive forts of these disparate organizations and also in securing Hill-Burton
Active in medical poli- funds to supplement the inadequate funding provided by a local
bond issue to build the Bexar
tics for his entire career County Hospital. His cardio-
(President of Bexar vascular surgeon son, Dr.
County Medical Society Marvin Smith, was later
[BCMS] in 1967 and also elected President of the Bexar
the Texas Medical Associa- County Medical Society in
tion [TMA] in 1977) and 1998, making them the only
having personal access to father-son duo to have had
important members of the that distinction.
UT Board of Regents and
in the Texas Legislature, Merton Minter Drive
Dr. Smith was instrumen- Also an effective medical
tal in coordinating the ef-

26 San Antonio Medicine • September 2017