Preeminent doctor left ‘indelible legacy’ here
Dr. James Willerson, a preeminent heart researcher and doctor who led two esteemed Texas Medical Center institutions, has died. He was 80.
Willerson, former president of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and then the Texas Heart Institute, succumbed to cancer Wednesday at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center.
“Dr. Willerson’s indelible legacy will live on in perpetuity through his countless achievements in cardiovascular research and philanthropy, the passion he poured into everything he accomplished and his immeasurable impact on the evolution of a world-renowned organization,” Eric Wade, chairman of the Texas Heart board of trustees, said in a statement. “He lived a tremendous life defined by curiosity and an eternally burning flame for the study of the human heart and its myriad complexities.”
Willerson continued Houston’s
legacy of groundbreaking heart care set by Drs. Michael E. DeBakey and Denton Cooley, though his achievements were in cardiology, not surgery. As Cooley’s successor at Texas Heart, he built up the cardiology side of the institute, until then known most for big surgery.
The death came as a shock to many in the Medical Center who assumed Willerson, a soft-spoken workaholic known for his devotion to his research and patients, would continue practicing indefinitely. He saw patients daily until shortly before his death.
Willerson wore many hats during his long career: basic scientist who identified the process by which arterial plaque ruptures and causes heart attacks, the discovery that led to the development of statins; Harvard-educated doctor who wore boots and treated patients like Mayor Bob Lanier, Astros pitcher Nolan Ryan and state Sen Rodney Ellis; agenda-setting editor of Circulation, the world’s premier heart journal; and visionary who charted a course toward excellence at UTHealth.
“He was an extraordinary, bigger-than-life individual,” said Dr. Christie Ballantyne, a Baylor College of Medicine cardiologist who interned under Willerson at Parkland Health and Hospital System in the 1980s. “He was the most dedicated, hardest working physician-scientist I’ve encountered. His passion and dedication to cardiology stood above the rest.”
Willerson was born in Lampasas, Texas, in 1939, the son of doctors, his father a general practitioner, his mother an anesthesiologist. Never in doubt he’d become a doctor, Willerson would accompany them on house calls, rounds and operating rooms after the family moved to San Antonio when he was two. At 15, he began a lifelong friendship with Cooley after his parents arranged a meeting between the two.
In high school — at the Texas Military Institute, Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s alma mater — Willerson was batallion commander, senior class president, school newspaper editor and swim team captain. He went to UT-Austin on a swimming scholarship. Decades later, UT named a swimming scholarship in his honor.
As a medical student at Baylor, Willerson reunited with Cooley and trained under DeBakey. In the years after the famous feud between the two, he was one of the few Houston doctors to remain friends with both. In 2007, he helped facilitate the rapprochement between the two.
Despite such mentors, Willerson never felt the call to go into surgery. He said he knew he didn’t have their facility with his hands and figured his mind was his strength.
“He was known for his incredible intellect, for his dramatically powerful memory,” said Dr. Reynolds Delgado, a Texas Heart Institute cardiologist who specializes in heart failure and heart transplantation. “As a resident making rounds with him, I could only come up with three causes of heart murmur when he asked me to name the five. Four years later, on rounds in similar circumstance, he asked me in front of everyone, ‘Can you tell me now?’ ”
Delgado also remembers Willerson sending him to Camp Pendleton to present a letter to the Marine Corps base camp commander. Upon reading the letter, the commander removed the world’s most heat sensitive sensor from a missile for Willerson to use with a new device he developed to image arteries from the inside out. The request came from the secretary of defense.
Willerson was awarded 15 patents as a result of researcher discoveries and co-founded four start-up biotechnology companies translating his discoveries into clinical practice. He edited or co-edited 27 textbooks, including his signature Third Edition of Cardiovascular Medicine. He published more than 1,030 scientific articles in major scientific journals.
In his latter years, Willerson’s research focused on regenerative medicine, seminal work that showed promise stem cells can repair hearts and cardiovascular vessels injured by heart attacks. That research is still a work in progress.
Willerson also was an ardent UT sports fan known to email coaches his advice and have meetings conclude with the singing of “The Eyes of Texas.” When one development office told him some board members who hadn’t attended UT and didn’t know the words felt uncomfortable, Willerson replied, “OK, I’ll just populate the board with more Longhorns and provide a lyrics sheet for those who aren’t.”
In all, Willerson’s practice included some 3,000 patients, drawn by his diagnostic skills and intuitive feel for the cause of the ailment.
“He was the last breed of doctors that saw medicine as a calling,” said Amy Willerson, one of his two daughters. “It was neverending, his readiness to take care of people. To him, helping people was the highest form of service.”
Besides Amy, Willerson is survived by his former wife, Nancy Beamer Willerson, his brother, Dr. Darrell Willerson Jr., daughter Sara and three grandchildren.
A celebration of Willerson’s life will be held at St. John the Divine Episcopal Church on Saturday, Oct. 10. The family is encouraging people to attend virtually.