Miller School Remembers Dr. Bernard Fogel, Former Dean and Pediatrician

Bernard “Bernie” Fogel, M.D., who served as the dean of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine for a 14-year period during which he oversaw a massive expansion of the school and refocused its mission to prioritize community service, died last week. He was 85.

A pediatrician to start his career, Dr. Fogel served as dean from 1981 to 1995, and remained an active advisor, mentor, and fundraiser at the school for another decade before retiring and moving to Bethesda, Maryland. There, he spent his days painting, drawing, following his favorite sports teams, and spending time with his wife of 63 years and their six grandchildren.

Dr. Fogel died March 30.

“He helped put us on the national stage,” said John Clarkson, M.D., who succeeded Dr. Fogel as dean and shared an office with him. “During his time, we became an important institution for AIDS research, diabetes research, and cancer research. I’ll miss him because when I would call him, you felt better after talking to him. He had a way of making you feel better about yourself, making you feel better about things.”

Key Lessons

Dr. Fogel was born in the Bronx, N.Y., in 1936, but his family moved to Miami when he was still a child. It was in South Florida that he made two key discoveries that would define the rest of his life.

The first was a lesson from his father, who owned and operated the Cakemaster Bakery near Coral Gables. Miami was racially segregated at the time, but his father made a point to hire black employees, even bailing them out of jail if they had run-ins with a police department that had only recently started allowing black police officers in its ranks.

“They were really down-and-out people who needed a second chance,” said Dr. Fogel’s wife, Judy. “I think Bernie learned a whole lot of human nature and forgiveness and giving people another chance. That was definitely a part of his philosophy.”

That lesson later turned into the Miller School’s Health Careers Motivation Program, which offers students from historically marginalized communities training led by Miller School faculty to help them increase their chances of being accepted into medical schools. That program remains in effect today.

That lesson would also inspire Dr. Fogel’s decision to reorient the Miller School to focus on giving back. At the time, most medical schools had a three-pronged mission statement: medical education, research, and patient care. Dr. Fogel added a fourth: community service. The school started health fairs in marginalized communities, and faculty and students volunteered in great number to staff these clinics. That work earned the Miller School the Association of American Medical Colleges’ first-ever Spencer Foreman Award for Outstanding Community Engagement in 1993.

Dr. Fogel’s second South Florida discovery came in high school when he was spending a day with some friends.

“There was this young man in the pool,” Judy Fogel said. “I thought he was just adorable. I told his mother when I was 15 years old that I was going to marry her son.”

She did, starting a 63-year marriage that resulted in three daughters, six grandchildren, and a lifelong commitment that endured to his final days.

“Oh my God, the way he was with those kids,” said Betty DuFour, Dr. Fogel’s former executive assistant. “He would work late, but he would be home when he needed to. He was very devoted. A perfect family.”

Dr. Fogel started his higher education at Emory University, but quickly transferred back home and earned his bachelor’s and medical degrees at the University of Miami in 1961. After graduating, he spent five years at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, where he did his pediatric training and researched communicable diseases.

He then returned to the University of Miami, this time as director of the Division of Neonatology. In that role, he teamed up with other doctors in 1967 to perform the first successful thymus transplant on a six-week-old infant suffering from DiGeorge Syndrome.

Dean Impact

In 1981, he was chosen to lead the Miller School as its next dean, quickly earning the reputation as a bridge-builder who excelled at creating, fostering, and expanding the university’s relationships. He helped cement the bond between the University of Miami and the Jackson Health System, which now stands as one of the few remaining partnerships between a private university and a public hospital. And during his time, the Miller School experienced a rapid expansion of new programs.

During Dr. Fogel’s tenure as dean, the school launched The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, the Center for Adult Development and Aging, the Comprehensive AIDS Program, and the Ear Institute. The school also built the Papanicolaou annex, the Gautier Building, the Winn-Dixie Hope Lodge, and the Schoninger Research Quadrangle during his time.

“Dr. Fogel was instrumental in elevating the Miller School from a regional institution to a truly global one, creating and fostering the programs that have become our hallmarks,” said Henri R. Ford, M.D., M.H.A., dean and chief academic officer of the Miller School. “The university and the broader South Florida community owe a great debt to his work.”

When Dr. Fogel stepped down as dean in 1995, U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek delivered a speech in Congress where she called Dr. Fogel “one of the true pioneers of health care education in the country today.” During that speech, Meek made special note of Dr. Fogel’s Health Careers Motivation Program, pointing out that the university was, at the time, teaching half of all African-American medical students in the state of Florida.

“Though one of the country’s youngest medical schools, during the Fogel years the University of Miami School of Medicine has achieved a level of excellence shared by some of the nation’s oldest and finest schools of medicine,” said Meek, who passed away in 2021.

DuFour, Dr. Fogel’s executive assistant, said she was consistently astonished that a man who carried so many responsibilities maintained such a kind and caring disposition around everybody he came across.

“I don’t know if he ever got angry,” she said. “He was very kind to everybody, top to bottom. It didn’t matter who you were or what you did, he was just a wonderful man.”

Judy Fogel said her husband spent his life trying to instill those same values in his children and his grandchildren. He spent much of his free time watching sports, playing tennis, and drawing. During the 1984 Olympics, he drew a portrait of every U.S. athlete participating in the Games. But she said his attention never strayed far from his family.

“He had a quote that all the grandchildren are very aware of: ‘Do the right thing, because it’s the right thing to do,’” she said. “It was a marriage made in heaven. I couldn’t have asked for anything more.”

Dr. Fogel is survived by his wife, Judy, and their daughters Lori, Wendy, and Amy, and their grandchildren: Michael, Daniel, Sam, Rachel, Josh, and Noah.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the charity of their own choosing.

Tags: Department of Pediatrics, Dr. Bernard Fogel, medical alumni, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami Health System