One medical school architect to receive prestigious award – Scranton Times-Tribune

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TRACY

Dr. Gerald Tracy joined his colleagues and stared into the yawning pit that was Scrantons sinking tech and medical sectors and resolved that they must close it.

The consortium of 18 area business and medical leaders, about 13 years ago, set out to build a medical school a sure-fire fix, they believed, for what the Pennsylvania Medical Society said in 2005 would be a severe physician shortage across Pennsylvania.

We really had to prove that we could deliver a product. That was the hardest thing I ever did, Tracy said.

In October, the cardiologist will receive the medical societys Distinguished Service Award, a prestigious honor first given to polio vaccine inventor Dr. Jonas Salk in 1956. The Lackawanna County Medical Society nominated Tracy mostly for his efforts to found the Commonwealth Medical College, now the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine.

The Pennsylvania Medical Society has bestowed its highest award only 28 other times in the last 61 years.

At 75, Tracy, a 40-year medical society member, continues to work at the school with students as a clinical professor and in other administrative departments.

Dr. Tracy and other visionaries associated with bringing a medical college to northeastern Pennsylvania demonstrated an innovative way to increase access to care in an area of the state that needed a boost, PAMED President Dr. Charles Cutler

said in a statement.

Jerry Joyce, a Scranton developer and one of the original Northeast Pennsylvania Medical Education Development Consortium members, applauded Tracys award, and said the accolade shines a light on the advances taking place in the region.

Right in the incipient stages, he brought a real high energy and a great deal of commitment of his time, Joyce said of Tracy. Theres a period of time in the beginning where youre selling a story, and you have to get people to buy into that.

Tracy, who shunned the extra attention the service award has brought him, said by the time they were ready to start recruiting students, they had ironed out all the kinks in their pitch.

Im not bragging, I think we had our act together, he said.

They had area medical education heavyweights, like himself, Dr. Charles Bannon and Dr. Robert Wright, as founding consortium members who had been teaching for decades. They also had business leaders in Joyce and consortium president Robert Naismith, a local entrepreneur, among others

Then-Gov. Ed Rendell had reservations about Scrantons medical school, but another consortium member, former state Sen. Robert Mellow, had the governors ear.

The college subsequently received $35 million

in state funding, the first major cash infusion toward its initial $75 million

construction goal.

Mellow has been friends with Tracy for 40 years or more, he said. And the doctor cared diligently for Mellows daughter in 1992 after she was hit by a drunk driver, he said.

He deserves it for everything that he has done, for everything that he stands for and for everything that he will continue to do while the good Lord has him on this earth, he said, applauding Tracys award.

Despite his admiration for Tracy, Mellow, an enthusiastic New York Yankees fan, said he will forever needle the doctor, who likes the Boston Red Sox.

Contact the writer:

joconnell@timesshamrock.com;

570-348-9131;

@jon_oc on Twitter