Douglas R Shanklin

Dr. Douglas Radford Shanklin AB, MD, FRSM (Fellow of the Royal Medical Society, UK) of Falmouth, MA, and Washington, DC, died after a short battle with cancer on Tuesday, November 12, 2013 at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, DC. He was born in Camden, New Jersey on November 25, 1930; grew up in Washington where he helped build a number of Appalachian Trail cabins as an Eagle Scout. He later attended Syracuse University, then entered the State University of New York’s medical school, having ranked first in the New York State’s Regents Exam. He did his Residency at Duke University in Pathology and Obstetrics and, after a 2-year stint in the Navy, completed a Fellowship in Pathology at the Upstate Medical Center at Syracuse in 1958. He began as a research trainee/junior investigator at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole in 1955. In April of 1956 he married Virginia McClure; they had five children: Elizabeth, Leigh Dabney, Lois Virginia (Sandy), John Carter, and Eleanor Shanklin Truex. He became a Senior Investigator, a Corporation Member from 1970-2013, and served on the Marine Resources Center committee, including Chairman of the Resources Planning Committee in 1995. As a Professor of Pathology, he taught hundreds of Medical students, Residents, and Fellows at the State University of New York, the University of Florida (Associate Professor), where he won the “Best Teacher” award, and at the University of Chicago (Pathologist-in-Chief at Chicago Lying-In Hospital). In 1983 began a long association with the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. He was a trustee and member of the Board of Directors of the Memphis Opera, a member of the Hugo’s Companions of the Chicago chapter of the Baker Street Irregulars, the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club, the Washington chapter of the American Chemical Society, the Cosmos Club in Washington and a life member of the Navy League. He is survived by his wife and three children, Elizabeth, John Carter and Eleanor, and grandchildren Laura Anne Truex, Robert Gregory Truex and Johnathan Douglas Truex. Two of his children, Leigh Dabney and Lois Virginia (Sandy) predeceased him