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BCMS
HONOREES

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at what was then Robert B. Green Memorial
Hospital downtown.
When his military service ended in 1964, he
joined the faculty of the University of Chicago
and met and married his wife, Ellinor. A few
years later, he was invited to return to San An-
tonio to help start a new medical school and
develop a program in kidney disease. In 1968,
he returned to San Antonio for good.
Initially chief of the renal disease division,
Dr. Forland helped initiate the new curriculum
and the hemodialysis, kidney biopsy and trans-
plantation programs at the medical school and
affiliated hospitals. He rose through the ranks,
becoming the medical school’s associate dean
for clinical affairs.
Whether working across departments, insti-
tutions or the community, Dr. Forland became
known for his collaborative spirit and sound
advice, traits still very much evident today.
“I think my major contribution, perhaps,
has been as a communitarian, trying to engage
and work closely with others in whatever area
of responsibility I was asked to undertake,”
Dr. Forland said.

“The Candle That Lights
Our Path”
Medical ethics has been taught at the Joe R.
& Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine
since its inception, but ethics discussions had
long relegated to the final months of medical
school, when students’ minds were on their
residencies. As associate dean, Dr. Forland
interested in a caring profession rather than an entrepreneurial pro- sought to give ethics more prominence, with limited success.
fession, and I found that I like sciences as well as literature,” he re- Then, at retirement, Dr. Forland captured the imagination of
called in a videotaped 2010 interview. “I thought that medicine then-School of Medicine Dean Steven Wartman, M.D., Ph.D.,
would satisfy most of these interests.” who proposed a combined program in medical ethics and hu-
After graduating from Colgate University, he completed medical manism. With support from President Francisco Cigarroa, M.D.,
school at Columbia University and residency at the University of the Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics was born in 2002
Chicago. Two years of volunteer military service brought him to and up-and-coming author Abraham Verghese, M.D., recruited
Fort Sam Houston’s Surgical Research Unit. Discovering that he as founding director.
was the only nephrologist in San Antonio, Dr. Forland volunteered Dr. Forland remains closely involved with the Center he helped

16 San Antonio Medicine • March 2019