(This article, reprinted with permission, featuring Earl Metz, class of 1953, and Marvin Stone, class of 1955, appeared in the Eastside Messenger on April 16, 2001) 

After almost 50 years after graduating from Bexley High School, physicians Marvin Stone and Earl Metz have no problem recalling the names of teachers who were influential for them.

Like many students from that era, these graduates from the classes of 1955 and 1953, respectively, offer such names as Carlton Smith, Charles Hoel and John Schacht as outstanding educators who cared about their students in and out of the classroom.

“John Schacht was concerned about how his students drove,” noted Stone, who returned to his alma mater with Metz to participate in the Judah Folkman Scientist in Residence program. “He was concerned that people vote, that it was important to exercise the right to vote.”

Stone and Metz have carried this concern for the whole person into their medical careers, establishing themselves as teachers as well as doctors.

Stone, certified in internal medicine, hematology and medical oncology, was recognized as the outstanding teacher at Baylor University in 1999. That same year, Baylor dedicated the Marvin J. Stone Library in appreciation of his accomplishments.

Stone studied premedicine at Ohio State University and received his medical degree from the University of Chicago. He later researched immunochemistry at the National Institute of Health.

Metz has been a professor of medicine at OSU since 1974, after receiving his undergraduate degree in biology from Capital University and his medical degree from Duke University.

He has served as Chief of Staff at Ohio State University Hospitals; director of the OSU Division of Medicine; and Chief of Staff at the Arthur James Cancer Hospital and Research Institute.

In 1996, Metz was named the 1996 American College of Physicians Master Teacher, and was the first recipient of the Earl Nelson Metz Distinguished Physician Award.

The award presenter said that future recipients should be someone “who lives and breathes the profession and who reminds all of us that, in the words of Francis Peabody, the secret in caring for the patient is to care for the patient.”

That empathetic approach is something Metz and Stone learned from their high school instructors, along with a solid academic regimen.

And the men say they were influenced not just by a biology teacher such as Hoel, or a math instructor like Schacht, but by English teachers including Antoinette Barr.

“I remember every one of my English teachers” said Stone, whose hobbies include, collecting antique medical books and microscopes.

The letter grade wasn’t always the most important measure of success, teachers emphasized.

Stone recalled Schacht commenting, “I don’t really know how to grade students. If I can get within a letter grade, that’s as close I can get.”

Stone advised students to follow their passions, whether for medicine or any other discipline.

“You ought to be led by your interests, if you have a burning interest (in medicine), follow it,” said Stone, who planned for a medical career from junior high.

“We all do better at things we enjoy in life,” agreed Metz, who also envisioned a career in medicine early on.

Both men have seen quite a few changes in medicine, but the majors one may not have come from a test tube.

“What has changed is the patient-doctor relationship,” Stone said. “There is more of a collegial kind of relationship. It’s not as paternalistic as it used to be.”

When the men were in medical school, many cancer patients wouldn’t have been informed of the diagnosis by their physicians, Stone said.