John P. McGovern, MD: A Lifetime of Stories

Chapter Seven. Last Glimpses

No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition. —William Osler, 19051 Up Close and Personal The stories of John McGovern’s life tell us much about the man, but do they answer the question whether we really know him or know only what we want to know? Even the great Osler was no saint. From time to time he was criticized by the media, even battered in the popular press.2 William Bean, a lifelong Oslerian and the first president of the American Osler Society, insisted, “To me Osler was no paper saint, but a very human person. His imp of the perverse sustained a streak of practical joking which made many people miserable and got him into a world of trouble.”3 Osler freely admitted, “I have made mistakes, but they have been mistakes of the head not of the heart.”4 McGovern, like Osler, was certainly no stranger to his own mistakes, as he demonstrated amply during his parents’ Thanksgiving visit to Durham, when he rewarded their time, trouble, and long anticipation by disappearing into his lab and abandoning them to his roommate. And we saw a temperamental side to McGovern as a young Last Glimpses Chapter Seven 192 | chapter seven faculty member who engaged in an “altercation” in a parking lot. Nor was that the only occasion on which his temper got the best of him. McGovern was as complex as he was talented. Those who worked with him daily are quick to praise his fairness and his work ethic but are mindful that he was the Chief—with a capital “C”—who called the shots. From early on he was recognized as driven,5 and his drive only intensified in the course of his career. As a physician he was gentle and compassionate. As a businessman investing money and building his foundation, he was often forceful and demanding. That he could balance medical and business careers simultaneously and be extraordinarily successful at both is impressive , to say the least. Orville Story, who spent so many years providing the numbers that guided McGovern’s business decisions, knew McGovern the businessman better than anybody else did, and he had great admiration for his boss. Yet Story was quick to note that the two had their battles from time to time. On one occasion, “Mrs. McGovern had to come downstairs to serve as referee to break up our shouting match by reminding us both how many years we had worked together so productively and that a good night’s rest would do us both a great deal of good. She was right. The next day we couldn’t remember what got us both so agitated with each other.”6 The tireless and sometimes mercurial McGovern could test the patience and endurance of even the most loyal of employees. Glenn Knotts (1935–2003), a distinguished Purdue alum7 and close friend of McGovern’s, who assisted with foundation projects for several years, recalled that the Chief could dish out his displeasure in generous portions, and he was particularly quick to do so if he suspected an employee of presenting him with sloppy research. In fact any evidence of slipshod performance could bring down a rain of fire. “We got into such a shouting match one afternoon in Galveston that I announced my resignation , slammed the door, and drove to the nearest beach, where I paced back and forth until the sun went down.” The next week, recalled Knotts, “We had lunch together and the matter was dropped, never to surface again.”8 On a sunny July afternoon in 1996, Knotts was shot three times as his car was hijacked at a carwash near the Texas Medical Center on the corner of Kirby Drive and North Braeswood.9 The unknown assailant dragged last glimpses | 193 Knotts out of the driver’s seat and sped away in his car, leaving Knotts to crawl to the now locked door of the adjacent gas station while onlookers gasped in horror. “I just sat on the curb in a pool of blood and waited to die,” he recalled. He had a vague recollection of paramedics and demanding to be taken to Hermann Hospital, where trauma surgeon Red Duke found that one of the bullets had missed his...