Naming the 'Resident of the Year' award after Keith Reemtsma requires a little explanation since Dr. Reemtsma had no particular relationship to the Department of Surgery.
In 1998 during an informal conversation between Keith Reemtsma (Columbia's Surgery Chairman) and Clyde Barker (Penn Surgery Chairman), Dr. Reemtsma offered to endow an annual award for the Department of Surgery, specifying that he would like it to go to our "Top Resident." He cited his loyalty as a Penn Medical School graduate.
During Dr. Reemtsma's surgical training at Columbia there was one additional Penn association. His closest mentor was Clyde Barker's brother, Harold a Columbia faculty surgeon who was HUP trained. After residency in 1958 Keith became a faculty member at Tulane. There he performed a series of chimpanzee to human kidney transplants, still the most successful xenografts ever done. One survived for 9 months. In 1966 Keith was appointed surgery chairman at the University of Utah and then in 1971 chairman at Columbia where he started programs in kidney and heart transplantation.
Dr. Reemtsma's heart transplant program became the country's largest. In 2000 he died from liver cancer ironically not amenable to transplantation. Until his illness prevented it Keith and his wife Judy came from New York to be at our graduation dinners for the presentation of the Reemtsma award.
Winners of the Reemtsma award might be interested to know that Keith, who served in a Korean War M*A*S*H unit always asserted that he was the prototype on which TV's Hawkeye was based. The humor, charisma and warmth of this larger than life figure convinced his many friends that the claim must be valid.