Joseph Clarence Woo Jr. MD, FACP, FACC, FCCP and His Wife Mabel Have Been

Joseph Clarence Woo Jr. MD, FACP, FACC, FCCP and his wife Mabel have been the gracious donors of several major gifts and untold hours of dedicated time and commitment to the overall development of Community Medical Centers’ hospitals and facilities. Life is circuitous. The circle of life and death, the circles of friendship and mutual commitment, relationships that span decades and generations. Even the circuitous path blood travels as it passes through the right and left ventricles of the heart. Life-giving, life-affirming circles. This is the story of a lifetime of relationships, a vast, connected series of circles.

1900 was a simpler time.

In California, it was a time of gold rush bust, railroad boom and agricultural prosperity. In Fresno, it was a time of street cars and Piggly Wigglys. It was a time when Fresno’s largest health care provider was a boarding house-turned-hospital. Celia Burnett, proprietor of that successful Fresno boarding house, had been approached by several physicians about turning her boarding house into a private hospital. She agreed and the Burnett Sanitarium, at the southeast corner of Fulton and Calaveras streets, served the community of Fresno from 1897 to 1905.

The Fresno Morning Republican newspaper reported that the mission of the hospital was “to provide a place where persons suffering from disease can be treated while under the care of physicians.” It was a simple objective for a simple time. Specialty care was limited, doctors still made house calls, and most babies were born at home. The use of X-rays was still being explored. Penicillin was unheard of, as was CPR. In fact, most doctors thought the heart was a delicate organ, too delicate to interfere with. In short, 1900 was a century poised on the brink of medical discoveries, large and small.

In Fresno, life went on, and the population grew steadily. Patient numbers grew also, and in 1905 the Burnett Sanitarium moved from the modest boarding house to a three-story building on the northeast corner of Fresno and S streets, built at a cost of $12,500. Back then, a weeklong hospital stay could cost a patient between $15 and $25, still expensive when you considered the average American wage in 1905 was between $438 and $574 a year.

In 1916, the hospital prepared for another expansion. This time, plans were drawn for a five- story structure facing S Street. Built at a cost of $150,000, this facility, known as the Burnett Annex, would add two minor and two major surgeries, administrative offices and additional beds to the hospital. For the next 29 years, the Burnett Sanitarium and Annex would continue to serve Fresno and its surrounding communities. It was one of the most modern hospitals on the West Coast.

Long-time Fresnans associated with Community Medical Centers separate the phases of the hospital by the height of its structures. First there was the Burnett Sanitarium, then the Burnett Annex, then the Five-Story, and then there was the Ten-Story. And sometimes family growth spanned hospital growth. Such was the case with the Joseph Woo family.

1 It’s 1908. Eight-year old Lillian Lee and her family are brought by her father to California from Canton, China, entering the state through Angel Island Immigration Station, the lesser-known West Coast version of Ellis Island. The family settles in Fresno among the large Chinese population in Chinatown. Lillian worked at the Lyceum Theatre on F Street and attended Fresno Technical High where she would be the first Chinese woman in Fresno to receive a high school diploma.

Joseph C. Woo, Sr. had been born to first generation immigrant parents in Sparks, Nevada in 1898. His father came from China in 1872 to work on the Central Pacific Railroad. They moved to Fresno in 1921. Joseph Sr. worked as a salesman at the China Toggery on Fulton and Tulare streets. Lillian and Joseph noticed each other at a dance but cultural custom prevented them from meeting; they had to find someone else to introduce them first. Apparently the introductions went well because Joseph and Lillian were married the next year in 1922. Their first child, a daughter, Geraldine was born in 1923; the following year Joseph Jr. was born, delivered by Fresno doctor William Stein, one of the early physicians and stockholders of the Burnett Sanitarium. Woo was born in the Sanitarium and had his tonsils taken out in the Annex. His relationship with Community Hospital began early.

Joseph Jr. grew up in that simpler time of the early 1900s. The streetcar barn was nearby on First and Tulare streets, and if the streetcars weren’t running, bicycles were quick and easy transport to unexplored parts of the city. He delivered newspapers for the Fresno Bee and reveled in the fact that as a newspaper carrier he could get into movies for free on Saturdays. Hot summer days were spent swimming in the irrigation ditch at Millbrook and McKinley. He attended Jackson School and then Roosevelt High School. Along the way, his interest in biology and medicine grew.

“I was interested in little animals, butterflies. I’d dissect frogs to see what was in them. My mom wasn’t too happy about that but she never discouraged me,” he said. In fact, his parents were always supportive of both him and Geraldine. “My sister and I rarely had to ask for anything we needed, but we never wanted anything extravagant,” he said. Joseph Jr. had outside support as well. Dr. William Stein, the doctor who had delivered him, noticed his interest in medicine and kept track of his progress. It would be a relationship that spanned a lifetime.

By now, the Woo family had bought a home at 8th and Nevada, the first Chinese family to live in that area. Joseph Sr. opened Woo’s Café in the Warnor’s Theatre building on Fulton Street. At the time, it was the largest restaurant in Fresno. Joseph Jr. worked in the restaurant after school, often waiting on Dr. Stein, a frequent patron of the Café. “Are you going to med school? Have you applied yet?” he would ask the young Joseph, discussing the merits of medical schools and offering advice.

It was during this same time physician John D. Morgan would come to practice in family practice and surgery at the Burnett Sanitarium. In 1937, Dr. Morgan became chairman of the

2 board of the hospital. For the next ten years, he would guide the hospital through its transformation from the private Burnett Sanitarium to Fresno Community Hospital, a nonprofit general medical and surgical hospital.

In the years prior to 1945, the San Joaquin Valley was pretty much a medical frontier. The pattern of diseases was seasonal: winter would usher in respiratory diseases consisting of pneumonia, thoracic emphysema, respiratory infections of all kinds and acute mastoid (ear infection) cases. As far as contagious diseases went, diphtheria, typhoid, scarlet fever, rubeola, rubella, pertussis and smallpox were all prevalent. Most diseases had no specific effective medications, only support treatment. Summer and early fall would see a great influx of patients with polio. In fact, Fresno County Hospital would actually gain a statewide reputation as a polio center. The iron lung was in common use for patients with polio which affected the muscles of respiration.

Despite grim odds for patients, those years would see some of the most far-reaching medical advancements to date: the advent of antimicrobial agents such as sulfonamide and penicillin, early studies and experiments with heart surgery, advances in anesthesia, and the early testing of vaccines against polio, measles and rubella.

Meanwhile, life continued in the Woo household. The young Joseph graduated from Roosevelt in 1942 and enrolled at Fresno State College. He was recruited to run track by J. Flint Hanner, the award-winning track coach who started the West Coast Relays. With no track experience, Woo ran the 300-yard dash against the Hammer Field Air Force Team. He won the race in 36 seconds and subsequently became a member of the team which would win the college-division Mile Relay in the 1943 West Coast Relays. He would be the first Chinese to letter in track at the college.

Majoring in pre-med, Woo took the usual litany of classes. Even though chemistry was a tough course for him, it played a big part in his curriculum, both academically and personally. Each year, the department held a competition with the top three chemistry students, in front of the whole department, answering rapid-fire chemistry questions. The last man standing was the winner. And it was always men in those days, until, one year there was a woman among the three. Woo thought, “I’ve got to meet that gal.” Mabel Lowe was her name and she would become his wife, the mother of their three children, and a valuable employee.

Woo graduated from Fresno State College in 1944 and went away to med school at George Washington University in Washington D.C. working as a lab technician to help cover his room and board. “I didn’t have to,” he said, “but I wanted to contribute something so my parents wouldn’t have to spend so much.” Looking back, he admits he would have gotten better grades if he had not worked, but it was a matter of honor for him to help his family.

While Woo was studying on the east coast, Mabel headed north and received her BS in chemistry at UC Berkeley in 1946. Once a year, Woo would take the train from D.C. to

3 California just to see her. Woo graduated from George Washington on May 26, 1948 at the age of 23. Mabel flew out for the graduation and the next day, May 27, they were married at Tacoma Park Baptist Church in D.C. After the wedding, the honeymooners packed their 1946 red Ford convertible and took a 6,000-mile cross country road trip winding through Canada, Wyoming, and Washington. They returned to Fresno where Mabel worked for Twining Laboratories as a chemist and Dr. Woo started his internship at Fresno County General Hospital. The next year he started his first year surgical residency in the department of pathology under the directorship of Dr. John Miller of the Mayo Clinic.

During this period in the pathology service, Woo was examining a cultured specimen from an autopsy of a patient with a lung lesion when another resident jostled the Petri dish Woo was holding, sending the live spores airborne and infecting Woo with acute coccidioidomycosis, or Valley Fever. Woo the physician became Woo the patient as he recovered in isolation at Fresno County General Hospital for almost a year.

Inspired by his own medical misfortune, he decided not to become a surgeon and instead became a medical resident. He was chief resident from 1951 to 1952. He was selected to be Senior Resident at Springville, California, where he studied with Dr. William Winn, the world’s leading authority on Valley Fever, tuberculosis and pulmonary diseases. He enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1954 and spent two years in Texas as Chief of Medicine at the Amarillo 3320th Air Force Hospital during the Korean conflict. He was discharged as a Captain in 1956 and came back to Fresno to start his practice in internal medicine. “A lot of students went out right away and started their practice after their internships. Not me,” he said. Instead he spent those seven years learning the nuances of the specialties he was interested in. “I was intrigued by internal medicine because I had to think, everything had to be analyzed by study and experience, there was no technology available,” he said. Remember, this was the mid-1950s, an era when TV was still new, autopsies were the best way to see inside a body and medical students still had to wear a tie to class, even for those autopsies.

Dr. Woo and Mabel settled into a home on Huntington Boulevard, close to Community Hospital and, ironically, just a block away from long-time mentor Dr. William Stein who, along with his wife, would become Dr. Woo’s patients. For Woo it was an honor and a privilege to care for the man who had cared for and about him for so many years. In fact, Dr. Woo credits Dr. Stein for much of his philosophy of patient care; the patient always comes first and caring about the patient is as important as caring for the patient. Dr. Stein would later leave a $150,000 endowment in honor of Dr. Woo to be used at his discretion for cardiac research.

In the 23 years it had taken Joseph Woo, Jr. to become Dr. Joseph Woo, the Burnett Sanitarium underwent its own transformation to become Fresno Community Hospital, a non-profit corporation. The transformation was not without growing pains as the hospital had reached its operating capacity a few years earlier. In fact, in a March 5, 1955 Fresno Bee article, Dr. John D. Morgan, then president of the Community Hospital board of trustees said, “It has been necessary

4 to turn patients away from this hospital for many years because of the shortage of beds. At the present time, we are turning away as many as 19 acutely ill persons daily, and have had to cancel as many as nine major surgeries (in a single morning) because we had no beds for the patients.”

“There is no question (that) the situation regarding hospital beds in Fresno is bad and will grow progressively worse,” he said.

On a similar note, in 1957 Esther Roach, Fresno Community Hospital’s Director of Nursing, wrote “We have watched our daily patient load climb from some 62 persons in 1937 to as many as 170 during the past few years. The situation is much the same as that faced by a housewife who unexpectedly has three times as many house guests arrive for a weekend visit than she has room to accommodate them.” Except weekend guests usually don’t expect the housewife to deliver their babies or heal their illnesses.

That year, 1957, saw the completion of a huge, two-year fundraising effort. Under the diligent direction and tireless work of campaign chairman and Community champion Leon S. Peters, the physicians and staff of the hospital and the community of Fresno raised more than $1.5 million to build a new hospital. It would be the largest money-raising effort of its kind in Fresno County.

However, no sooner had the new five-story, 204-bed hospital been dedicated when this headline appeared in the Fresno Bee, February 27, 1959: “Immediate Remodeling of Old Hospital is Ordered: Hospital Now is 95 Per Cent of Its Capacity.” Hospital administrator Clifton H. Linville said in the article, “We’re not any better off than we were before. It would appear that the new hospital is just catching up with the population growth of the San Joaquin Valley area which it was built to serve.”

So it was back to the drawing board. In 1961, Fresno Community would grow again as it installed a 26-bed psychiatric unit and, in 1962, renovated the exterior of the 1916 Annex. In 1963, the shelled-in fifth floor of the new Fresno Community Hospital was completed, adding 69 beds. Ironically, due to a critical shortage of registered nurses in California and throughout the United States, only half of the beds could be put to use immediately. Community Hospital would recruit nurses from England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Canada to fill the gap.

In his annual address to the board, then-Board president Leon S. Peters said, “The demand for hospital services in this area and from the Fresno Community Hospital continues to grow. It is graphically illustrated by the following comparisons of the total annual patient days and patients admitted. In 1958, we had 47,249 patient days with 8,547 admitted; in 1961, we had 66,803 patient days with 12,838 admitted. In 1962, we had 71,529 patient days with 14,157 patients admitted. This is approximately a 50% increase within the last four years.”

In 1964, in another attempt to keep up with patient demand, the interior of the 1916 building was completely remodeled.

5 The hospital wasn’t the only institution experiencing expansion; in 1963, Dr. Woo was joined in practice by his brother-in-law, Dr. Eugene Lowe in an office on R Street, across from the hospital. Mabel would work at the office as well—frequently that was the only time she saw her husband. “She’s been my guiding light for more than 60 years,” Woo said. “She worked in the office, raised the kids, she was always my beacon.” They had three children, Caryn, Joseph III and Cynthia, all of whom are now professionals in the medical field.

At the time, Dr. Woo not only worked in Fresno, he was also a consultant for Madera County Hospital as physician in charge of medical clinics from 1956 to 1961. His days were long, frequently starting at 6 a.m. and not finishing until midnight. There were patients to see in the office, patients to see at the hospital, and both Woo and Lowe still made house calls. Back then, an office visit cost $2.50; a house call was $5.00. Prepaid clinical insurance was practically unknown. There was no Medicare or Medicaid; if a patient had no money, he or she would barter payment with a chicken, trout, vegetables or fruit. Sometimes services such as painting or carpentry services were bartered as payment. Malpractice insurance was simple and inexpensive, less than $100 for over $50,000 worth of coverage. And back then, $50,000 went a lot further that it does today.

Medical advancement, however, was becoming more complicated. On the coronary care front, in 1962 the first open-heart surgery was successfully completed in Minnesota. As techniques and treatments improved so did technology. The heart-lung machine was being used with increasing success and heart transplants were being explored. Once unthinkable, it appeared that advances in heart surgery were unstoppable. In 1964, intrigued by these advances, Dr. Woo determined the time had come for Fresno Community to join in the development of a high-quality cardiac care unit, one that would allow for continuous monitoring of heart patients, something that wasn’t available at the time. Heart attack patients were dying of ventricular fibrillation or tachycardia which was treatable with the advent of the defibrillator. But, at the time, who had one of those? And how was it used?

Always looking for solutions and ways to learn more and educate more, Woo traveled the country, touring other cardiac facilities and meeting with pioneers in cardiac medicine. He went to the Bethany Hospital in Kansas City to spend time with Dr. Hughes Day, who had opened the second coronary care unit in the United States. Woo traveled to Cedars-Sinai to meet with Jeremy Swan, the inventor of the Swan-Gantz cardiac catheter. From there, based on what he had seen and learned as well as the recommendations of other cardiologists, Dr. Woo established a five-bed cardiac care unit (CCU) at Fresno Community. It was the first CCU in the Valley, the fourth in the state of California and the fifteenth in the nation. And it was his good friend and Medical Staff President, Dr. Malcolm Masten, who appointed Dr. Woo to Director of Coronary Care.

As usual, the call went out to the community to help fund the unit. In a message to the board and to the community, Board President Leon S. Peters said, “Sudden death in the critical 72 hours

6 following a coronary heart attack is often due to potentially reversible causes. Only an Intensive Coronary Care Unit can provide the early detection and care required to reduce this toll of lives.… Today we have a real opportunity to save lives … here and now, in our own community… the lives of friends, neighbors, loved ones … yes, even your own. We will have comprehensive cardiac care at Fresno Community Hospital.”

A total of $112,700 was needed to equip the CCU. As had been the case so many times before, with Lee Peters leading the fundraising charge, the community of Fresno responded to the needs of its Community Hospital. Woo would be among those contributing personal funds to make the unit happen. Today, on the fourth floor in the CCU, there is still a small plaque commemorating Woo’s donation in memory of his maternal grandmother, Wong Sing Lee.

The CCU was able to curtail cardiac death with the use of continuous patient monitoring via electrocardiograph, a “space-age technology” as it was heralded. It was the beginning of high technology in medical diagnosis and treatment. “Each patient will have his own monitoring device which is attached by means of electrodes to a cardiac monitor which in turn sends a continuous electrocardiographic image to oscilloscopes located at the nurse’s station and at the patient’s bedside. This means the nurse can see the individual ECG at the bedside and the ECG of all patients when she is at the station,” reported the Fresno Bee, September 2, 1965.

Now it seems simple, the ECG monitor and the idea that technology would save lives but back then it was cutting-edge. From the June/July 1965 Community Hospital newsletter comes this breathless account: “Code Blue! Sounds like something from a war game, doesn’t it? And it is a war against death. Code Blue means Cardiac Arrest. At that moment the life of a human being hangs in the balance. A battle begins to restore a heart that has stopped beating.”

The article continues, “Quick action by a trained team is essential and can help to save lives… Closed chest cardiac resuscitation is being taught to all physicians, nurses and other hospital personnel who will be called upon in such an emergency. A teaching program using mannequins, lecturers and motion pictures is being carried on at Fresno Community Hospital.” The man behind the training and programs? Dr. Joseph Woo.

As director of the CCU, Dr. Woo’s schedule became even busier. It was not by coincidence that, living on Huntington Boulevard, Woo could be at the cardiac care unit in four minutes flat. “A lot of the other doctors were living out in the Sunnyside area,” he remarked. “I wanted to be close to my patients.” Of the first 100 cardiac arrests in the CCU, Woo was there personally for 50 of them.

Woo trained the nurses and doctors in arrhythmias, the use of a defibrillator, planting venous and arterial lines, giving cardiac medicine and even CPR. All the while, he ministered to his patients. “All the patients in the CCU were my patients until the other doctors became aware of this life- saving unit,” he notes. In the CCU, he got to share something even more important with his patients; he got to share his faith. “Being a doctor means you see a lot of life and death,” he said.

7 “As physicians, we see people who don’t know what happens when we die; it makes them afraid of death. I’ve sat at the bedsides of patients who have survived an episode of cardiac arrest and I’ve asked, ‘What did you feel?’ As a Christian, it gave me an opening to discuss eternity and that our spiritual life will be better than what we have today.”

Never one to sit back and rest on his laurels, Woo would continue to push to learn more and implement that learning. The Cardiac Care Unit would be the first step in providing state-of-the- art cardiac care to Valley patients. The success of the CCU paved the way for an even larger step in cardiology care: the establishment of the Diagnostic Heart Center and Catheterization Lab in 1971. Located on the fifth floor, the Heart Center provided diagnostic services for both pre- and post-coronary care.

Through the contacts he had made with Cedars-Sinai, Dr. Woo was instrumental in bringing two prominent cardiologists to Community: Dr. Thomas J. McHugh, a Stanford graduate who was a cardiac fellow for three years with Dr. Jeremy Swan; and, Dr. Robert L. Blum, a USC grad who did postgraduate work at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center under Dr. Swan as well. Together they directed the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory. Both doctors developed department protocols and conducted weekly teaching programs and seminars for physicians and nurses. The Diagnostic Heart Center also provided services to other hospitals and medical personnel throughout the San Joaquin Valley. Once again, Dr. Woo and Mabel would donate personally to the fifth-floor Diagnostic Heart Center, this time in the name of Woo’s maternal grandfather, Lee Jang.

Not content with bringing state-of-the-art cardiac care to the hospital, Dr. Woo was instrumental in the creation of the Emergency Department at Community as well. In 1972, the emergency room was just that, a room on the first floor of the Annex. Staffed with a single nurse, it was wholly inadequate. Dr. Woo, true to his mission to improving patient care and facilities, went to then-hospital CEO James Helzer and expressed his desire to improve the emergency facilties. “Dr Woo is progressive in his thinking,” Helzer said. “He felt we had a need in the community, particularly downtown. We had the capacity, we had the need, and he said, ‘Let’s roll up our sleeves and get this done.” After touring emergency facilities with Helzer and another physician, Dr. Woo came back with recommendations for what would become the busiest and most well- respected emergency and trauma center in the state—Community Regional Medical Center.

“Dr Woo is very compassionate, very dedicated,” Helzer said. “He has dedicated not only his time to the betterment of the hospital but financially he has been a leader as well. He has his heart and soul in this hospital.”

Not only were the cardiology and emergency departments growing, the entire hospital was again expanding. A new 10-story building was under construction, increasing the hospital bed capacity from 299 to 450 beds. With the completion of the top three floors, the hospital would have a potential bed capacity of approximately 550 patient beds. In his address to the board, Leon

8 Peters, still board president, said, “To meet the progressive needs of our area it has been the objective of the Fresno Community Hospital to develop a complete, comprehensive health center, to provide the facilities and personnel to fulfill the needs of each citizen as a whole, be it physical, mental or spiritual.” It was a sentiment Dr. Woo held near to his heart as well. “Most physicians become a physician because they want to take care of people,” Woo said. “But the optimum care of patients is to have the philosophy of empathy and caring for the patient and the family.”

It’s a philosophy Woo has employed in all walks of his life. One would think his involvement with two hospitals and his private practice would have filled his work day completely. However, his early work at Fresno Community Hospital would include such positions as director of the cardiac care unit, vice president of medical staff, director of the resuscitation program, and president of medical staff. He was also Chairman of the Department of Medicine, Education Committee, Program Committee and Cardiac Advisory Committee.

Dr. Woo also believed that, as a physician, it was his duty to serve on the boards of many community organizations as well. Receiving a slice of his time were such organizations as San Joaquin Gardens, Santa Fe railroads, First Chinese Baptist Church, Fresno County Health Department, Health System Agency, Area 9, Summa Health and Fresno County Medical Society Managed Care.

He also served on the Fresno County Medical Society board of governors, the Fresno County Tuberculosis Association and Heart Association, and was a physician for the Fresno Rescue Mission for ten years.

In 1972 he would be chosen to serve on Community Hospital’s Board of Trustees of Fresno Community Hospital, a position he would hold for twenty years and would mark as the best years of his professional career.

“I was so fortunate to have worked alongside Mr. (Leon) Peters, Dr. John D. Morgan, Jim Mayer, Bud Richter,” he said. “They were all able to think in terms of ‘little c’ community and ‘big C’ Community. We’re here to take care of people, regardless of their race, religion or financial status.

“We are involved with improving lives of people in the community. If you don’t grow up in an environment and experience the trials and tribulations of achieving the American Dream, you don’t have the empathy and feeling for those less fortunate. That’s why my 20 years on the board were probably the greatest segment of my professional life. It was a commitment but people who believe in something have to make commitments. It sure doesn’t come without some foresight and experience,” Woo said.

Foresight and experience continued to guide the growth of Community Hospital through the next years. By 1974 the ten-story addition would be completed, and the finishing touches would be

9 put on the cardiac unit, which would occupy the entire south wing of the fourth floor and accommodate fourteen patients. In his annual address to the board, Leon S. Peters said, “This new equipment, larger area and properly trained personnel have brought to our community a much-needed service. It already has saved many lives. We are proud of our cardiac/coronary care unit and are indebted to Dr. Joseph C. Woo, Jr., a member of the Board of Trustees, for his efforts to see the project completed.”

A look at the numbers shows how far Community had come from the days of 1937 when the daily patient load was 62 persons to less than forty years later when the patient admission for 1974-75 was 20,378, not counting newborns, which would number 3,478. Diagnostic heart procedures would jump from 3,710 in 1974-75 to 4,885 in 1975-76. It was during this time the Cardiovascular Laboratory, as it had come to be called, came under fire for being a closed staff lab. In other words, Drs. Blum and McHugh were the only physicians allowed access to the lab; outside physicians from other hospitals were not allowed access. In a show of support, Community physicians penned the following statement:

“Drs. Blum and McHugh came to us after years of study in the world renowned cardiovascular laboratory of Dr. Swan. They have maintained close intellectual ties to this facility, thus insuring a high continuing level of sophistication in the area. Advances are occurring with breath-taking rapidity and the instrumentations ever more esoteric in the sector of cardiovascular testing. All established first-rate centers have similar arrangements with full time cardiologists who are occupied on a continuing basis with the maintenance and development of a cardiovascular laboratory…. Drs. Blum and McHugh (have) played a major role in the upward evolution of this hospital as a center of excellence.”

A center of excellence was just what guiding Community pioneer Dr. John D. Morgan had in mind; Community mourned his death in 1977. County physician and superintendent of the Fresno County Hospital from 1914 to 1921, Dr. Morgan served as a member of the board of trustees of the Burnett Sanitarium in 1933. He became president of the Burnett medical staff in 1934 and president of the Board of Trustees in 1937. He would be the only person to have run both of Fresno’s oldest hospitals. He left Fresno to serve in World War II in command of an Army hospital in England. Upon returning, he served as president of the hospital and chairman of the board from 1945 to 1959. He served on the board until 1973 then served as an employee health center physician until his death in 1977. Dr. Woo counted him as a mentor and friend. “The two pioneers of Community Hospital are Dr. John D. Morgan and Leon S. Peters. I was fortunate and privileged to serve with and walk in the footprints of both men. They were truly the original pioneers of the hospital,” he said.

It was the end of one era and the start of another. Attendees at the hospital’s annual meeting December 13, 1978 would hear Leon S. Peters say, “Perhaps at no time in the past has medical science made such drastic developments and breakthroughs in the delivery of health care to our people. Each year a new piece of scientific equipment is developed or a service implemented to

10 treat our patients. It is of utmost importance that hospitals and medical centers keep abreast of these developments and constantly bring to their patients and the community at large these new services and means of treating our people.” Note he said “our” people—the people of “little c” community and the people of “big C” Community. The line between the little c and the big C was blurred intentionally.

From the early years, when the Burnett Sanitarium was not only a hospital but a nursing school as well, to present day as Community operates a physician residency program in conjunction with UC San Francisco, education has always been a cornerstone of Community’s mission. It was also a mission of Dr. Woo’s.

On the teaching staff at Fresno General-University Medical Center from 1956 to 1975, Dr. Woo was a mentor to scores of today’s physicians. From 1974 to 1982, Dr. Woo was a proctor for fourth-year pharmacy students from University of Pacific School of Pharmacy and would participate in clinicals, daily rounds on patients with various diseases, working with three or four students a year, one hour daily for one month with each student. “I encourage students today to think outside of the box, think independently,” he said. “Keep studying, get all the education you can. We never know enough.”

It’s a sentiment Dr. Woo employs and encourages even to this day, whether he’s talking to students, patients, colleagues or to his own grandchildren. “He always tells me to ‘keep reading’ and ‘there’s always more to learn.’ I carry that with me every day,” said his granddaughter Katie who is a doctor in her fifth year as an oncology fellow at National Institute of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. His other granddaughter, Jocelyn, concurred: “He used to tell me to never stop learning and I think this is very obviously reflected through his professional and personal life. He continues to read … more and more information to keep his mind sharp. The slogan he always used for me when I was younger was to ‘think outside the box.’ He always supported my every effort to do so as well.” Following in her grandfather’s footsteps as well, Jocelyn will begin her first year of medical school at Creighton Medical School, Omaha, Nebraska, in fall 2013.

1982 would mark another growth spurt for Community: Fresno Community Hospital would become Fresno Community Hospital and Medical Center and would merge with Clovis Memorial Hospital, renamed Clovis Community Hospital. It was another move in which Dr. Woo played a key role. “I served on the board with Joe Levy at the time,” Woo said. “He discovered that the 168 freeway was going to go right by Clovis Community.” Woo and Levy encouraged Community to spend the $4.5 million to acquire 400 acres of land adjacent to Clovis Community for future expansion. Dr. Woo and Mabel would also donate funds for a wing at the Clovis hospital.

In addition to all his work with big C Community, Dr. Woo continued to give back to the little c community as well. As Hmong refugees began to arrive in Fresno, he ran a free medical clinic at the Asian Friendship Center every Monday night from 1985 to 1995, work that would earn him

11 the Lifetime Community Service Award from the Fresno Medical Society in 2006. He also served on the board to establish a ministry to the Hmong community as well as serving on the First Chinese Baptist Church building committee. His pastor, Virgil Reeve, characterizes him as a man whose people skills and compassionate care always inspired confidence.

At the other end of the spectrum, mixing in a little play with work, Dr. Woo donated his time as a volunteer physician to the U.S. Open Golf Tournament at Pebble Beach in 2000. He was asked to serve again at the 2010 US Open. None of his volunteerism was about the accolades though. Woo is a humble man, ready to discount awards for the sake of furthering his philosophy of “the patient comes first.” Even as medical advances and technology escalated, Dr. Woo continued to make house calls, a practice he kept until the day he retired in 2006. His brother-in-law and practice partner, Dr. Eugene Lowe, said, “Former patients still call Dr. Woo at home even though he is retired. He had a close friend who was ill with an infection in his spine. The infection became so severe he had to go to San Francisco for hospitalization. Dr. Woo drove up there personally for months to check on him until he was well enough to come home.

“When we were in practice, we saw patients morning and evening at no extra charge. We’d take our kids on house calls with us,” Dr. Lowe said. For Dr. Woo being available and compassionate was just part and parcel of being a doctor.

“He doesn’t really change within his various roles,” Dr. Lowe said. “I have never seen him lose his temper. In all our time together in the practice, we never had any disagreements.” In fact, when it came time to close the office, the partners agreed that the best thing they could do with the building and the land was to donate it for Terry’s House, a hospitality home across the street from Community Regional Medical Center where families can eat, sleep, cook and shower while their loved ones are recovering. In fact, over the entrance to Terry’s House is the inscription that simply reads, “Special thanks to the Woo and Lowe families for their continued support.”

In 2006, 50 years after starting his practice, Dr. Woo prepared to retire. In an uncharacteristic move for most doctors but a wholly characteristic move for him, he stayed on for a full year after leaving the practice to complete a warm hand-off of all his patients. The doctor who took over his practice had never seen anything like it but Woo felt it was important, especially in his practice where he had taken care of so many friends and family. “It’s been a long journey,” he said. And as his brother-in-law noted, to this day patients and family members still call him with concerns or requests for consultations. He still does clinics and cardiac conferences and keeps a close eye on his big C Community as well as his little c community. He frequently punctuates his observations with “I need to tell Mr. Chubb about that.” Jack Chubb is CEO of Community Regional Medical Center and a frequent recipient of ideas and suggestions from Dr. Woo.

“The man is passionate, tireless and wants to stay on top of the latest technology and the latest medical advances,” Chubb said. “He’s always thinking about what he can do to move the whole 1500-physician body forward.”

12 “We have organized leadership but very few people like Dr. Woo who have the sense of the hospital’s history and the energy level to stay engaged. He’s part of that generation that believed in a lifetime of giving back,” Chubb said. “It’s unique for a physician to maintain a position of giving after he has transitioned from practice but he comes in asking how he can keep serving, continuing to share information, actively helping the medical center remain the leader in central California.

“He’s a joy to work with. I have a tremendous love and respect for the man.”

Dr. Stephen Lipnik, who practiced with Dr. Woo in the mid-1970s, had much the same to say. Currently an interventional cardiologist in Colorado, Lipnik remembers Woo as the driving force behind the development of contemporary cardiology at Community. “He’s enormously skilled in clinical experience and extremely well-read in literature which, in combination, made him an outstanding physician,” Lipnik said. “He’s a combination of being medically knowledgeable and compassionate at the same time.”

Lipnik was also personally touched when Dr. Woo took the younger physicians under his wing and mentored them. Though Lipnik described Woo as a “daunting presence in the hospital,” Lipnik continued on to say, “he was always kind, thorough and nurturing. He’s a very fine gentleman. It was an honor to serve alongside him.”

Also familiar with Dr. Woo’s appetite for learning are the librarians from the Community Medical Centers medical library, Vicky Christianson and Judy Kammerer. “Dr. Woo has always been a big user of the library,” said Kammerer. “We have cardiology conferences every Tuesday, which Dr. Woo frequently attends. He’s a big believer in continuing medical education. I don’t know if you could think of him as retired though. He wants to help everybody and he keeps up- to-date.”

“When his iPhone came in, he was really excited about it and needed information on how to use it. Now he’s an advocate of its use among all the other doctors,” she said. “He’s willing to go to the top to fight for any resource for Community to keep our doctors current.”

“I just hope Dr. Woo can be with us for a long time to be a voice to make sure the focus is on the patient, making sure we remember that it’s a combination of caring for the patient and caring about the patient,” Kammerer said.

“He’s very focused on learning. He never quits, he’s always after something,” Christianson said. And it’s not just medicine he’s interested in. “He’s very concerned about the state of the world,” she said.

His concern for the state of the world includes a revision of the way health care is viewed both from the patient’s perspective as well as the doctor’s perspective. “We have to change delivery of health care; we’ve been too traditional in our delivery,” he said. “Hospitals have traditionally

13 been for sick people; we need to also be advocates for health care not just sick care. Major problems like diabetes and obesity have to do with changing habits. Government wants to step in and do it for us but I’m against that. We have to do it ourselves, use common sense and train doctors to get back to basics.

“The patient is what counts, no matter how busy you are,” he said. “It’s been my life’s work and privilege to have been involved with the development of this great medical institution. Medicine has been my vocation, avocation and passion for over five decades.”

This document was prepared by Key Writing Concepts Inc. as a live commentary from Dr. Joseph C. Woo Jr.

It was presented to Dr. Woo at the February 12, 2013 Community Medical Centers Board of Trustee Meeting by Chairman, Mark Borba.

“It has been an honor for me to help with the development of this document which serves as my bridge to bring the past to the present. It is now my turn to pass the torch to the next generation of physicians and board members that they may continue the tradition started by Leon S. Peters and Dr. John D. Morgan of furthering the mission of Community Medical Centers to take care of the sick regardless of race, creed or finances and to turn this institution into a world-class medical health and education center.”

Joseph C. Woo Jr., MD, FACP, FACC, FCCP

14 “The care of patients has been my vocation, avocation and passion.

Continuing education is paramount to every physician;

what we know is not enough.”

Joseph C. Woo Jr., MD, FACP, FACC, FCCP