The founder of the University of Arizona College of Medicine, Dr. Merlin K. "Monte" DuVal, died Tuesday night of a heart attack in Phoenix. He was 84.
A former surgeon, federal health official, health-care advocate and longtime community icon in Tucson, DuVal is credited with creating the medical college almost singlehandedly.
"Monte was the College of Medicine as well as the Arizona Health Sciences Center," said Dr. Vincent Fulginiti, a pediatrician and one of the first doctors recruited here by DuVal in the 1960s, who is now co-director of the Medical Reserve Corps of Southern Arizona.
"We have to remember he came here by himself and built the entire faculty. He raised the money to get it going, then convinced the state to fund it it and the students to come here.
"This was a man impossible not to admire. Monte had a great vision and a goal to be the best we could be — and he made it all happen.
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"We have lost a very great friend, and Arizona has lost a tremendous voice in health care."
DuVal arrived in Tucson in 1963, when he was hired as founding dean of the new medical college by then-UA President Richard Harvill.
Charged with the job of establishing Arizona's first school to teach medical students, he launched the massive effort to raise funds, design the buildings and recruit doctors, opening the college in 1967.
Four years later, as the first class of doctors was graduating, the University of Arizona Teaching Hospital — now University Medical Center — opened to patients in 1971.
"Monte was a very clever human being," said Dr. Paul Capp, also brought here by DuVal as the first chief of radiology.
"He was able to get the city excited, he got the newspapers excited, he put on the big campaign, and he built those first buildings for free with the money he raised. He was a team player. He knew what it took to get the medical school off the starting block."
DuVal was named assistant secretary of health in the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare by President Richard Nixon in 1971.
While in Washington, he became a vocal critic of tobacco companies by warning about the dangers of smoking.
DuVal also shut down the notorious and unethical Tuskegee syphilis experiment — a disgraced 40-year study of about 400 black men who were allowed to degenerate and die without treatment, so doctors could see how the disease affected their race.
DuVal returned to the UA in 1973 to serve as acting dean of the medical college for a year, then as vice president for health sciences until 1979.
DuVal's medical career began with his graduation from Dartmouth Medical School in 1944, with completion of his medical degree at Cornell University in 1946.
Following service in the Navy, he completed an internship at Roosevelt Hospital in New York and his surgical residency at the Bronx Veterans Administration Hospital, then joined the surgical faculty at State University of New York in Brooklyn in 1954, where he developed an innovative surgical pro- cedure for treating patients with chronic pancreatitis.
In 1957, DuVal became one of the first full-time faculty members at the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine, then served as assistant director of University of Oklahoma Medical Center until 1963, when he was lured to the UA.
Following his years here, DuVal moved to San Francisco, where he served as president and chief executive officer of the National Center for Health Education from 1979 to 1982. He then returned to Arizona, taking over as president and CEO of Associated Hospital Systems/American Healthcare Institute in Phoenix until 1988, then as senior vice president for medical affairs at Samaritan Health Services in that city until his retirement in 1990.
Active during retirement, DuVal became a strong voice for establishing the UA's new medical school campus in Phoenix and was recognized for that effort during the school's dedication ceremony in October.
UA President Robert Shelton cited DuVal — who was in the audience that day — for meeting with Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon right after he was elected and urging him to make the medical school a top priority.
"That completed the full circle for him," said his son, Fred DuVal, now a member of the Arizona Board of Regents and a former aide to Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt and President Bill Clinton.
"After the fight between Tucson and Phoenix over who would get the first medical school, he was able to see two medical campuses in this state, now in both cities."
Over the course of his life, DuVal was recognized with nine honorary degrees and fellowships and numerous awards for scholarship and public and community service. At the UA, he was given the UA Bobcats Hall of Fame Award in 1978; the College of Pharmacy's Rufus A. Lyman Community Service Award in 1979; and the College of Medicine Dean's Award in 1987.
In 1987, the Arizona Health Sciences Center auditorium was designated "Merlin K. DuVal Auditorium" in his honor.
DuVal's unexpected death occurred just as he and his wife, Ruth, were moving back to Tucson, to live at Academy Village, the development at the base of the Rincon Mountains founded by former UA President Henry Koffler.
After a going-away party in his honor in Phoenix on Sunday night, movers transferred the DuVals' belongings to Tucson on Tuesday. The couple went out for a last dinner in Phoenix that night, where DuVal suddenly collapsed, dying instantly of a massive heart attack, his son said.
DuVal had suffered a previous heart attack in 1971, but had bypass surgery.
"We are so grateful he had three-plus decades of good life since then," Fred DuVal said.
DuVal is survived by his wife, Ruth; his former wife, Carol Whiteman of Tucson; two sons, David of Sonora, Calif., and Fred of Phoenix; and a daughter, Barbara of Phoenix.
The family has established a fund to benefit Med-Start, a UA College of Medicine program established by DuVal that encourages ethnic minority, disadvantaged, rural and nontraditional students to pursue careers in the health professions.
Checks may be made out to the UA Foundation/Med-Start, College of Medicine Development Office, P.O. Box 245018, Tucson AZ 85724-5018.
"After the fight ... over who would get the first medical school, he was able to see two medical campuses in this state, now in both cities."
Fred DuVal, Merlin DuVal's son and member of the Arizona Board of Regents
