Page 20 - St. Judes

“John spent quite a lot of time in the lab,” says Robert Webster, PhD,
emeritus faculty member. “He and Luis Borella, MD, were both

clinicians who worked in the lab as well as in the clinic.”

In the clinic

During the turbulent 1960s, some patient families initially balked at
having an African American oncologist. Hospital Director Donald
Pinkel, MD, recalls an Arkansas woman who took her child and

stormed out of the clinic upon seeing her child’s doctor. Pinkel
spoke with her and explained that Smith was an accomplished
physician, convincing her to return to the hospital and trust her
child to Smith’s care.

“We were colleagues in the Department of Hematology-Oncology,”

recalls emeritus faculty member Gaston Rivera, MD, who arrived at
St. Jude in 1970. “John saw the patients with tumors, and I saw the
patients with leukemia. He was well-liked by everybody—his
colleagues, the nurses. He also had a wonderful rapport with his

patients.”

Smith eventually became head of the hospital’s outpatient clinic.

Research pioneer

Online genealogical records tell us that Smith was born in Omaha,

Nebraska, to Geraldine Smith, a housekeeper with a 10th grade
education. When he was a teenager, his family moved to Los
Angeles. During a stint in the Army, beginning at age 20, he traveled
from California to Germany. Smith earned a bachelor’s degree from
UCLA and a medical degree from Howard University in Washington,

D.C.

He began his research career at St. Jude in the Virology laboratory,
exploring the relationship between childhood cancer and viruses.
The hospital’s 1965 annual report shows that he and eight Virology
colleagues conducted studies on the Lucké tumor, Newcastle disease

virus and murine leukemia viruses. In 1966, their research included
rhabdomyosarcoma, a muscle cancer. That year, Smith and his
colleagues, including hospital director Donald Pinkel, MD, spoke to