Great People Who Do Great Things

Longtime friendship with surgeon leads to extraordinary gift

Ask Dr. Harry Young about his longtime friends Jim and Fran McGlothlin, and his response is simple. “They are great people who do great things.” Indeed, the McGlothlins have a generous habit of sharing their resources with institutions they believe in, including the VCU School of Medicine.

Dr. Young, director of the Harold F. Young Neurosurgical Center at the VCU Medical Center and chair of the Department of Neurosurgery, met the couple in the late 1990s as they searched for an end to Mr. McGlothlin’s chronic back pain.

“No matter where else I went, I just kept getting tugged back to MCV,” she said. “There is a ‘give it all you’ve got’ culture here. The teamwork and patient-centered, interdisciplinary approach just gets in your blood.”

“I had a disc that had deteriorated and great difficulty standing,” McGlothlin said. “I found my way to Dr. Young and his team.” Within the next seven months, McGlothlin underwent two surgical procedures to help return him to a productive, pain-free life. Each procedure was a success and today he works, walks and plays golf as if nothing ever happened.

A year later, his wife Fran made the trip back to the VCU Medical Center from their home in Bristol, Virginia. She was experiencing severe neck pain and could find no relief.

“Both Fran and Jim had conditions not easy to diagnose,” Young said. “They had both been evaluated elsewhere, and I believe perhaps others didn’t spend enough time with them to appreciate the difficulties they were experiencing. One of the things we do is to sit down and listen to our patients’ stories. They were in a great deal of pain. It was hard for either of them to function normally. Fortunately, we were able to make a difference in their lives and improve the quality of their lives.”

The patient-centered team effort surrounding Jim and Fran McGlothlin’s surgeries and their lengthy recovery struck a chord with the couple and they began to view Dr. Young and his colleagues as “guardian angels.” As their pain ended, their friendship began.

“We became good personal friends and I just admire him so much,” Mr. McGlothlin said. “He’s one of the great medical people who is not only talented and professional, but he has this wonderful caring attitude. At night, years later, he’d call and ask how I was.”

Fran McGlothlin, too, considers Young to be a close family friend. “I can’t say enough good things about him. He saw us both through a very stressful and trying time. I’ve never had another problem thanks to Harry. After Jim had been in the hospital for more than a week after his back surgery, he showed up on Christmas Day to check on him. I’ll never forget it,” she said.

In tribute to their friend’s compassionate care and patient-focused approach to medicine, the McGlothlins gave a $25 million gift to the School of Medicine after a dinner conversation with Young and Jerome F. Strauss III, M.D., Ph.D., Dean of the School of Medicine. The new medical education center now under construction has been named in the couple’s honor in recognition of their gift.

“When we learned that the new education center would be used for training of not only VCU interns and medical students, but also for others around the region and the community,” Mr. McGlothlin said, “it occurred to Fran and me that this is a great thing — to be able to bring doctors up from Bristol to take advantage of new technology and new techniques in medical education. Here, we’ll have a center that would help everyone in the region.”

Gifts with Lasting Impact

The McGlothlins are known for their exceptional generosity. In addition to their recent gift to the School of Medicine’s new medical education center (one of the largest private gifts ever received by the university), they established the James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin Chair in Neurosurgery in 2004 with a $2 million gift. Mr. McGlothlin also served as a member of the MCV Foundation’s Board of Trustees from 1998 to 2010. He is now a Lifetime Honorary Trustee.

“We support people who are doing really great work in the medical area,” Mrs. McGlothlin said. “We have great hopes that VCU will do lots of wonderful things and we want to support them as much as we can. We try to support things that are really meaningful not just through gifts for today, but through gifts that will last for a long time.”

As patrons of the arts, the McGlothlins donated their collection of significant American art to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts as well as pledged their financial support of the Museum’s capital campaign to fund its renovation and expansion. Mr. McGlothlin sits on the museum’s Board of Trustees. Mrs. McGlothlin is a former Board member.

They are benefactors of several educational institutions including the College of William and Mary, their alma mater, and the Mountain Mission School in Grundy, Virginia, a private, non-profit residential educational institution for children 18 months to 20 years old. Mr. McGlothlin, an avid golfer and founder of The Olde Farm golf club in Bristol, recently organized “The Big Three” benefit tournament, which brought together Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player in support of the Mountain Mission School. The event raised more than $15 million.

Frosting on the Cake

In the School of Medicine’s new medical education center, the McGlothins found a combination of three things they care deeply about: education, medicine and the arts.

The new building, now under construction, has been named the James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin Medical Education Center. It was designed by I. M. Pei’s internationally acclaimed architectural firm, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. Known for its design of the East Wing of the National Gallery, the Louvre Pyramid and more than 200 projects in 100 cities around the world, the firm paid careful attention to maintaining the integrity of Richmond’s history and upholding the tradition of MCV while presenting a fresh, modern approach to architectural design.

The McGlothlins weren’t aware of the I.M. Pei connection when they began considering their gift, but were pleased when they later learned of the artistic impact it would bring to the Richmond metropolitan area and beyond.

“Art and culture, education and medicine are lasting gifts we can make. The fact that I.M. Pei’s firm designed the new center is really frosting on the cake,” Mr. McGlothlin said.

Recognizing a Team Effort

The successful outcome of the McGlothlins’ surgical experiences at VCU would not have been possible without a well-honed team of professionals upon whom they relied. “From the people in the blood bank to the nurses’ aides to the cooks to the staff that clean the floors and all the associated departments such as orthopaedics, everybody made it work for them,” said Young. “It was a team effort.”

Efforts like these have made the neurosurgery department at VCU one of the nation’s top head-trauma programs and a leading recipient of sponsored research from the National Institutes of Health.

The McGlothlins view their lead gift to the School of Medicine as a way of recognizing the work of Dr. Young and his team. It is also a way for the couple to honor those who contribute to their philanthropic endeavors as dedicated staff associates and business partners.

As co-founder and chief executive officer of The United Company, a diversified business with interests in financial services, energy, and real estate development, Mr. McGlothlin is the team leader at one of the country’s largest privately held companies.  “We’re very blessed to work with thousands of people who helped make this gift possible,” he said. “We want to recognize the men and women who have worked with us.”

A Powerful Statement

Governor Bob McDonnell and Sheldon Retchin, M.D., vice president for VCU Health Sciences and CEO, VCU Health System, announced the gift at the university on April 28 before members of the press, faculty and friends.

“It was a day unlike any other,” said Dean Strauss. “Jim and Fran McGlothlin have been longtime friends of the medical school, and specifically, of Dr. Harry Young and his neurosurgery team. Inspired as they were by his compassionate and skillful patient care, they wanted to make a contribution to the training of future generations of physicians. And with a gift of $25 million, they have made a powerful statement of support of our own medical school’s future.”

The $158 million building enables the school to address the statewide and national physician shortage by accommodating a larger class size, from 200 to 250, which increases the total medical student body to 1,000.

“I very much share the McGlothlins’ respect and affection for Dr. Harry Young and his leadership at the VCU Medical Center,” said VCU President Michael Rao. “Jim and Fran McGlothlin’s extraordinary generosity will help to ensure that the VCU School of Medicine realizes its goal to educate physicians in the spirit of this talented and compassionate surgeon and his team.”

Physician education in the new education center includes a new curriculum as well as specially-designed learning studios to foster clinically-driven problem solving. Top floors of the new building will house the Massey Cancer Center’s Research Pavillion.

“Even before the McGlothlins’ announcement, the new center had won the support of alumni and friends who had committed $8.2 million to the medical school’s campaign that encompasses the building as well as scholarships and professorships,” said Dean Strauss. “With this announcement, we move into a more public phase of our campaign and expect to expand our cadre of supporters who will join the McGlothlins and other donors in making a statement of support for our vision of medical education’s future.”