By Michelle Jaffee; Event photos by Jackie Hart
The family of legendary University of Florida neurosurgeon Albert Rhoton, M.D., joined together with Gainesville community members and scientists who were once among his legion of trainees to celebrate his enduring impact on brain research and the lives of patients the world over.
At a Cade Museum event held Wednesday evening to mark Brain Awareness Week, daughter Alice Rhoton-Vlasak, M.D., and Phoebe Cade Miles, daughter of the lead inventor of Gatorade, led a discussion about the late Rhoton’s many pivotal achievements — from pioneering the field of microneurosurgical anatomy to inventing new surgical techniques and instruments to helping launch the McKnight Brain Institute.
An audience of 90, including Rhoton’s widow Joyce, a great-granddaughter and a group of high school students from the Mirror Image Leadership Academy in Gainesville, heard about Rhoton’s compassion, care and the work of his lab over almost 50 years to make neurosurgery more “accurate, gentle and safe.” The founding chair of UF’s Lillian S. Wells Department of Neurosurgery, which he led for 27 years, Rhoton kept working in his lab past retirement, until a week before his death in 2016 at the age of 83.
Kicking off the program, MBI Deputy Director Gordon Mitchell, Ph.D., described how the brain institute was born from a shared vision between a clinician — Rhoton — and a basic researcher — William G. Luttge, then chair of neuroscience and later the founding director of the MBI.
Now, on the heels of celebrating the MBI’s recent 25th anniversary, Mitchell said, such partnerships continue to drive its mission of enhancing lives through neuroscience research and education.
What Rhoton and Luttge started back in the 1990s has only continued to grow and deepen. Today, collaborations extend far beyond the walls of the MBI building to include members from 11 different UF colleges and investigations spanning dozens of research areas — from Alzheimer’s disease to psychiatric disorders to clinical trials to regain movement after spinal cord injury, to name just a few.
“Dr. Rhoton was famous for having said, ‘There is no finish line,’ ” Mitchell said, “and we’re looking forward to the next 25 years.”
Rhoton’s daughter described the many obstacles that her dad, who was born in a log cabin without running water or electricity in Appalachia, continually overcame.
“I think what’s important too about his life and where he ended up is every stage he was told ‘you probably won’t make it,’ ” she said. She held up a vest that he wore under his suit to keep his chest warm, a ritual born from a childhood battle with severe pneumonia.
By Zoom, a onetime fellow — one of thousands of Rhoton trainees — beamed into the room on a large screen. Today, Juan Carlos Fernandez-Miranda, M.D., is surgical director of the Stanford Brain Tumor, Skull Base, and Pituitary Centers, and he shared how he was part of a group that created the International Rhoton Society in 2016 to keep his legacy alive.
“I must say that being alongside Dr. Rhoton was definitely a highlight of my career,” Fernandez-Miranda said.
And though the final speaker, Duane Mitchell, M.D., Ph.D., didn’t work with Rhoton, he echoed the remarks of his colleague Gordon Mitchell in saying the MBI — and Rhoton’s vision of creating an institute focused on the brain — were instrumental in bringing him to UF.
“The brain institute had a huge impact on my interest and relocating our research team here because I saw the opportunity to just do amazing work here at the University of Florida with the integrated, collaborative efforts,” said Duane Mitchell, a professor of neurosurgery and co-director of UF’s Preston A. Wells Jr. Center for Brain Tumor Therapy.
Mitchell described feeling “extremely intimidated” moving into the Rhoton Laboratory in 2013 — and how he hoped to help carry on his extraordinary legacy.
Then, he asked for a show of hands of high school students in the room. Resounding applause broke out.
To the students, Mitchell said: “If you have any dreams, goals, visions or aspirations of what you want to do and you’re willing to work for it and you don’t give up on that dream or goal, no matter how many people tell you ‘you can’t’: You’ve heard Dr. Rhoton’s story of people telling him he was not going be able to achieve those goals. I had similar discouragement along the way.
“But I just want to say to you students: Hold fast to those dreams and goals.”
