More on Medical School Scholarships
The following excerpt on the Foundation is from the book, The Baltimore City Medical Society: A History, by Ron and Pat Pilling. Baltimore City Medical Society commissioned the book in 2004, the occasion of its 100th Anniversary as a component of MedChi.
When the Homewood Hospitals closed in 1991, the balance in the institutions’ charitable accounts was donated to the Baltimore City Medical Society Foundation to support an annual scholarship. In June, Dr. Ruth Ashman, the last President of the Homewood Hospital staff, presented the Foundation with a check for $75,000 The medical staffs at North Charles General Hospital and the Wyman Park Medical Associates, the institutions which made up Homewood Hospitals, had voted to donate all of the funds left in its treasury after the medical center’s final expenses were paid. Dr. Beryl Rosenstein, the President of the BCMS Foundation at the time, along with Dr. Philip Wagley, who chaired the committee which created the Foundation in 1972, accepted the check.
Other significant contributions enabled the Foundation to bolster its yearly giving. Three scholarships were funded annually by gifts in memory of three Baltimore physicians who were long time city practitioners; Drs. Elliott R. Fishel (President of the Society in 1985), Nathan E. Needle, and Kennard L. Yaffe (Society President in 1983). A strategic plan was set up during the Foundation Presidency of Dr. Murray A. Kalish (1993-1996) to solicit donations from hospital medical staffs, and every hospital in Baltimore participated. Allied specialty societies were contacted, with Dr. Kalish’s own Maryland-District of Columbia Society of Anesthesiologists making the first $1,000 specialty society donation. The Foundation then turned to local corporations for donations.
