Memorial—John A. Washington II, M.D.

IN MEMORIAM

John Washington, a direct descendant of Samuel Washington, the brother of President George Washington, was born in Istanbul, Turkey. Although international by birth, he attended high school in Alexandria, VA, college at the University of Virginia, and medical school at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. He began his medical career in surgery at Duke University but made an important career choice while at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), moving from the surgical branch of the National Cancer Institute to the Department of Clinical Pathology in the NIH Clinical Center. Two years later, in 1967, he moved from Maryland to Rochester, MN, to accept the position of associate consultant in the Microbiology Section of the Mayo Clinic's Department of Laboratory Medicine. His rise to prominence was rapid. In 1968, he was appointed Director of the Bacteriology Laboratory; 3 years later, he was named Head of the Section of Clinical Microbiology. In 1986, he made his final professional move, leaving the Mayo Clinic for the Cleveland Clinic, where he was first appointed Chairman of the Department of Microbiology, then, in 1989, the Medical Director of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation Reference Laboratory, and finally, in 1992, Chairman of the Department of Clinical Pathology, a title he held until his retirement in 2001.

John Washington was a member of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and the American Society of Clinical Pathologists and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, Infectious Diseases Society of America, the College of American Pathologists, and the American College of Physicians. He was an editor for the inaugural volume of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology as well as for Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy and served on the editorial boards of virtually all of the major microbiology and infectious disease journals. He was actively involved on numerous intramural committees at the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic as well as national committees for ASM, the FDA, the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS), and the American Society of Clinical Pathologists (ASCP).

John Washington's productivity as a scientist seeking answers to practical questions and as an author of timely research studies and scholarly reviews is legendary. The foundations of many of the current practices in clinical microbiology and infectious diseases originated in studies performed in his laboratory. Virtually all of the principles for processing blood cultures currently practiced in clinical laboratories resulted from his studies; he formulated the guidelines for assessing sputum specimens, he evaluated practically every manual and automated identification test system and all new antibacterial antibiotics introduced to the market from 1975 to 1995, and he described scores of bacterial pathogens and their associated diseases.

John Washington was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the recipient of a number of prominent awards, including the 1989 ASM Becton Dickinson Award for Research in Clinical Microbiology, the 1992 South Central Association of Clinical Microbiology (SCACM) Award for Outstanding Contributions to Clinical Microbiology, the 2000 Mayo Clinic Distinguished Alumnus Award, and the 2003 Pasteur Lifetime Achievement Award from the Illinois Society for Microbiology.

As impressive as was his success as an administrator, scientist and teacher, a description of these accomplishments fails to capture his true importance as a kind, caring individual who shaped the careers of many individuals, particularly his fellows, for no one benefitted more than the many fellows who spent their formative professional years learning from his knowledge and by his example. The following are the words of a few of his many fellows that capture their personal recollections.

“John was a gentleman. In addition to his great scientific talent, he had a generous, decent soul. I understand and am thankful for the scientific contributions, but what I will miss most are the warm laugh and friendship with a gentleman.”

“I met John Washington, or should I say I met his laugh, for the first time in the late 1970s when he was lecturing in Wilmington, Delaware. There was a dinner following the day's presentations, and throughout the entire dining area that was filled with conversation, one could clearly hear a robust laugh coming from one person. A distinct, joyful, comforting, boisterous laugh was his trademark. Later, as a postdoctoral fellow at Mayo, I got to know John as a quiet man who carried a big laugh, a quiet intellect who was a leader of peers and a quiet scientist who changed the clinical microbiology profession. It was his laugh, however, that identified him and endeared him to friends and colleagues.”

“One of my funny memories was the way he would rock back in his chair and give me a slight grin or a very unique sideways laugh—when I did something right or something amusing took place.”

“He was a very wise man and very kind to this very naïve fellow. I am saddened by the passing of such an important person in my life. I know that the opportunity of being trained by Dr. Washington opened many doors for me and provided a model of excellence.”

“Very early on my bacteriology rotation, I was puzzled in the interpretation of a Gram smear of pleural fluid sent to us from surgery that day. I couldn't make up my mind about the Gram reaction/morphology I was observing and didn't want to embarrass myself in front of the technologists, so I took the slide into John's office for help. He greeted my request with that characteristic chuckle of his and said that there wasn't much point in his looking at the Gram smear as he suffered from color blindness. I was stunned at the fact that here was one of the most renowned clinical microbiologists of the times, freely admitting to his fellow that he couldn't distinguish gram-positive from gram-negative! He asked me to describe what I saw on the slide. I did my best to detail my observations, and he said, ‘Given what you just told me, what does it sound like to you?’ I then realized I had just given a textbook description of Haemophilus morphology. He agreed with what now seemed obvious to me. The incident left me with two guiding principles that I used throughout my career. The first was that a laboratory director's role was not necessarily to do the job but to get it done. For that to happen, you needed other people sometimes to be your eyes and ears to help lead you to the right decision. Secondly, it is often helpful in a situation to step back, describe to yourself in words what you have observed, and the answer may become evident. To this day, when a med tech or medical student is looking for my assistance in interpreting stained smears microscopically, I ask them to tell me in detail what they saw. Not infrequently, the answer comes forth as the light bulb turns on, just as it did for me 37 years ago in Dr. John Washington's office. The world has lost a great laboratory practitioner, a talented teacher, and a kind and honorable man.”

“There are many excellent scientists in the clinical microbiology profession. Why did John Washington's influence extend so far? I found that he was interested in what others were doing, he listened, he changed his mind, and he sought the truth. He gave and shared credit fairly. He was organized and analytical. When he disagreed with you and was critical of your work, he took time to help.”

“In 1978, recognizing that I had done research in gastrointestinal microecology, he asked me if I was interested in looking for a new organism, Campylobacter jejuni. Immediately I was intrigued, so he connected me to people who were doing the work elsewhere and the project took off in late fall. The winter of 1979 was the longest, coldest, and snowiest in Minnesota history, and Campylobacter went underground, causing a few smirks on the faces of the doubters. But John kept encouraging me and I kept opening my Campy jars every afternoon with anticipation. In May, we finally had a few more cases. A young pediatrics nurse suffered an acute GI bleed and had the affected portion of her GI tract removed. The next day, her cultures grew Campylobacter jejuni, which she may have acquired from her patients. This created a storm of interest in the organism, and John and I attended endless clinical presentations, internal medicine meetings, and society group sessions. In the end we identified the first 68 cases of campylobacteriosis in Minnesota. Without John's encouragement, however, the long winter of negative culture results might have succumbed to the doubters.”

“He could spontaneously lecture a physician or a fellow about virtually any microbiologic topic and reference the most important articles written over the last decade. I was amazed by his knowledge.”

“He had cabinets that were full of important reprints, thousands of them. Every clinical microbiology topic had a file folder, and every folder was full of the important journal articles on that subject. If we needed an instant review of a subject, our first source was John Washington's file cabinet. This was the original ‘Google’!”

“He taught me how to write a manuscript. I will never forget the sense of failure when he returned my first manuscript. It was completely covered in red ink. By the time I wrote our last blood culture manuscript, I stared at it thinking ‘Where's the red ink?’ I knew that I'd achieved a level of success that I'd previously only dreamed of achieving. He was my mentor, my friend, and then a colleague. His kindness and reputation brought me to Mayo and opened doors that otherwise may have remained closed. On a personal and professional level, I will miss him greatly.”

All of us who knew him personally and also the many clinical microbiologists and infectious disease specialists who benefited from his lifelong work will miss him greatly. John is survived by his wife Maaja, his children Stephen, Richard, and Mikaela, and seven grandchildren. May they be comforted in the knowledge that so many of his colleagues will remember him with fondness and respect.