Outgoing president Dr. Walker Ray, 65M, (center) presented the Medical Alumni Association's Award of Honor to Dr. Dallas Hall, 63M, (left) and the Award for Distinguished Professional Achievement to Dr. John Stone. Dr. Benjamin Holton, 89M, and his wife were among those gathered at the alumni reception. Here, the Holtons chat with Dr. Dorothy Brinsfield. Dr. L. R. Braswell, 32M, had the distinction of being the oldest alumnus at the alumni dinner. He poses here with his wife, Lillian.

n September 26-27, 1997, some 187 graduates from the Emory University School of Medicine attended the annual reception of the Medical Alumni Association (MAA), held at the Grand Hyatt-Atlanta during Alumni Weekend. At the dinner, alumni met award recipients and new officers of the coming year. The Award for Distinguished Professional Achievement was presented to Dr. John Stone, professor of medicine as well as director of admissions and associate dean of the medical school. He founded and directed the Emergency Medicine Residency at Grady Memorial Hospital from 1974 through 1985. A well-respected physician, Dr. Stone has also been celebrated as one of the nation's outstanding poets and prose writers. His books of poetry include The Smell of Matches, In All This Rain, and Renaming the Streets. He also has written a collection of essays, In the Country of Hearts, as well as contributed work to many anthologies, including a volume on literature and medicine that he co-edited, titled On Doctoring. His work has appeared in well-known medical and literary journals, from The Annals of Internal Medicine and Journal of the American Medical Association to New England Review and the New York Times Magazine. He has received numerous awards for his writing. The Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters presented him its Literature Award in 1986 for Renaming the Streets, a prize previously given to southern novelists Walker Percy, Barry Hannah, and Ellen Gilchrist. The Council of Authors and Journalists named Dr. Stone Author of the Year in 1991. Dr. Stone also has distinguished himself as a teacher and clinician, receiving accolades from senior medical classes at Emory for Outstanding Professor Award 1972-73, the Best Clinical Professor Award 1975-76, and Best Clinical Faculty Award 1977-78. He was awarded the Thomas Jefferson Award for Distinguished Service to Emory in 1983. Most recently, he received the Nicholas E. Davies Memorial Scholar Award from the American College of Physicians. A native of Jackson, Mississippi, Dr. Stone received his MD from Washington University School of Medicine in 1962. He completed a residency in medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and a fellowship in cardiology at Emory. The MAA's Award of Honor was presented to Dr. W. Dallas Hall. Recently retired, Dr. Hall was professor of medicine, director of the medical school's Division of Hypertension, and program director of the General Clinical Research Center at Emory. He is well known for his work on hypertension. In the mid-1980s, he established an interdisciplinary conference on hypertension in blacks that continues to meet annually. Dr. Hall has been active at Emory, in Georgia, throughout the United States, and abroad. He served on the steering committee for Woodruff Health Sciences Center Research Planning, on the advisory council of Emory's Clinical Pharmaceutical Research Program, as a consultant to the Georgia Department of Human Resources' Stroke and Heart Attack Prevention Program, and on the senior advisory committee for clinical research at the University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences. A native of Calhoun, Georgia, Dr. Hall received his MD from Emory in 1963, and he completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at Grady in 1967. Two years later, after serving as staff physician at the US Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Dr. Hall joined the medical staff at Emory as assistant professor. Among his many awards and honors, Dr. Hall was named Outstanding Professor of Clinical Medicine in 1971 and 1972. He received an Outstanding Contribution Award from the Women's Health Initiative in 1995. He is the recipient of many grants from the National Institutes of Health, including the Genetic Epidemiology of Responses to Hypertensives and Kidney Disease and Hypertension in Blacks. Following the award ceremony, outgoing president Dr. Walker Ray passed the reins of the MAA to incoming president Dr. Maggie Mermin. Dr. Ray was the first MAA president to serve a two-year term, giving the office more stability and an opportunity for presidents to follow through with long-term initiatives. Dr. Mermin will also serve a two-year term. A magna cum laude graduate of the Emory School of Medicine in 1977, Dr. Mermin completed a residency in the Emory Affiliated Hospitals in 1980. After working as an emergency medicine physician, Dr. Mermin established a private practice in internal medicine in 1981. She also serves on the clinical associate faculty in the departments of Medicine and Community Medicine at Emory.

he next Medical Alumni Weekend is scheduled for September 25-26, 1998. Class chairs for years ending in 3 or 8 are being contacted for reunions. For more information, please contact Sarah T. (Sally) Millett Interim Director of Medical  Development and Alumni Relations Emory University School of Medicine 1440 Clifton Road Atlanta, GA 30322 404-727-0462 E-mail: smillett@rwwhsc.medadm.emory.edu