Chapter 26: Life Partnership with Anne Mendelsohn
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Description
In this Chapter, Dr. Mendelsohn speaks about his wife, Anne, who has been an important “intellectual and action partner in everything” he has done. (He notes that they just celebrated their fiftieth anniversary.) As examples he explains that Anne Mendelsohn created the equivalent of the Board of Visitors at the University of California –San Diego. At MD Anderson she started the yearly Christmas party for faculty and was also instrumental in building relationships with Board of Visitor members and other potential donors. He notes that they have been honored as a couple seven times, which is very rare. Dr. Mendelsohn explains that he and his wife are a part of the Houston community. They have friends from all parts of life. When he retires, they will stay in Houston, which is now home. He is now chairman of the board of the Houston Grand Opera.
Identifier
MendelsohnJ_03_20121017_C26
Publication Date
10-17-2012
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
John Mendelsohn, MD, Oral History Interview, October 17, 2012
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - Personal BackgroundThe AdministratorPersonal BackgroundCharacter, Values, Beliefs, TalentsEvolution of CareerPortraitsPost Retirement Activities
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Can I ask you about another team effort, which is your partnership with Anne Mendelsohn? How important has that been to your career and your effectiveness as a leader?
John Mendelsohn, MD:
I’m very lucky. You meet a girl when you’re in your mid 20s, and you decide to get married, and we just celebrated our 50th anniversary. We still enjoy sharing our interests and our lives, and we are still in love with each other. Anne has been willing to be an active partner in everything we’ve done together. When I was in training we moved a lot, and since I started at UCSD, we’ve had 3 major jobs. We had one at UCSD, where I founded and directed their cancer center, one at Sloan-Kettering where I was Chairman of Medicine, and one here. And with each move we made we weren’t going to move unless she was excited about moving.
She was not initially excited about moving to any of those three jobs. She hesitated about a move out to Southern California. If you’ve been on the East Coast a long time, the Northeast Coast, Southern California is sort of like Texas: they’re often made fun of. But we went out to La Jolla. We found incredible people and an opportunity to help start a new medical school, and she joined in and worked with me. We started a new cancer center. We had to raise money. She had a major role in developing the equivalent of our Board of Visitors, our community supporters. The first fundraising drive at UC San Diego was for the cancer center, and my wife had a major role in identifying and recruiting the contributors. They were so effective that the chancellor of the university “borrowed” most of them and created a university level group. She’s always asking me about what’s going on, and she’s giving me advice. If we’re sailing, I hold the main sheet, but she’s telling me when to trim it. When we were on sabbatical we put 15,000 miles on the car that we bought. I drove every mile, but she was in the front seat with the maps telling me what to do. She’s great at that.
When we went to Sloan-Kettering, there weren’t as many opportunities for her to be participating in what I did, but we had faculty over all the time. We had dinner parties. She got to know the faculty spouses. At MD Anderson we started a tradition. People didn’t know each other well enough, so she said, “Let’s throw a Christmas party,” so we had our Christmas party, and it was continued for 15 years on a Sunday afternoon in December. Everybody on the faculty and senior administration was invited with their spouse or their friend, and in any one year about a quarter of them came. She’s just been great at building collaborations and helping people meet each other. She was very active on the Board of Visitors. Most of our major donors that gave over $1 million know Anne well. I’ve learned that people don’t give $1 million just for the institution. They give it because they’re giving it to the person they trust and admire and are willing to support, and Anne is part of that. There are a lot of fundraising events where people are honored. We’ve been honored as a couple 7 times. This doesn’t ordinarily happen that often. It isn’t John Mendelsohn being honored. It’s John and Anne Mendelsohn. Here’s the picture: 70th anniversary of MD Anderson. They honored Anne and John Mendelsohn at the event.
Anne was chairman of the Teach for America board for 2 terms, and she was chairman of the Museum of Natural Science for a term and a half. She’s been very active in the community. I think she’s on any list of community leaders in Houston. That’s important to us because when we move to a community we want to be part of it and not just part of a group of doctors and scientists. Most of our friends are not MD Anderson people when we go out at night. That was true in New York. And it was true in San Diego. We have friends from all walks of life, and she’s very important in that because of her interests and because of the friends she develops.
We won’t even get into the subject of raising our kids together: it’s been a wonderful partnership. I’m very lucky, because each time we move she has had to start over. We have a lot of paired career families on our faculty. When you’re recruiting, the spouse’s career is key, and Anne has restarted her career each time we moved. She worked in very interesting paid positions until we moved here. Then she said, essentially, “I’m working fulltime pro bono for MD Anderson for 15 years.” Now she’s got more time on her hands. She’s actually doing more things in the community. It’s been wonderful. It was impossible without her. I’m glad you asked the question.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
John Mendelsohn, MD:
When I retired as president, people knew that I’d lived in La Jolla, California. I had a lot of friends there. I lived on Manhattan. I had a lot of friends there. I think many people figured I’d be out of here. But Houston is our home. We’re very happy here, and we belong to River Oaks Country Club and have a lot of friends there, and we have friends we play tennis with. She has a list of 15 different women, and at any one time 4 of them are playing tennis together. We enjoy the Houston Grand Opera, and I joined the board. I’m now the incoming chairman of the board. The point I’m making is that we feel very happy and proud to be part of the Houston community, and we’re participating in it even more now that we have the time. I’m going to be raising friends and money for the Opera. Not at the same level as MD Anderson and we certainly will continue to help this great institution in any way we can. We love the community and we love MD Anderson. We’re very happy to be here.
Recommended Citation
Mendelsohn, John MD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 26: Life Partnership with Anne Mendelsohn" (2012). Interview Chapters. 1442.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1442
Conditions Governing Access
Open
