Page 7 - Emory TFD Society BHM '21

Personal Life
Brendan Lovasik, M.D.
Dr. LaSalle Doheny Leffall Jr. was born on May 22, 1930, in Tallahassee, Fla. His father taught agriculture at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College (FAMU), a historically black college in Tallahassee. His mother, Martha Leffall, was also an educator. Leffall was raised in nearby Quincy, FL. He graduated as valedictorian from his high school at 15 years old, and matriculated to FAMU, where he was initiated into Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity,
Inc. Leffall was initially rejected by Howard University College of Medicine because of a low score on his Medical College Admission Test (MCAT). That decision was reversed after Florida A&M College President William H. Gray travelled to Washington, DC and personally lobbied the Howard medical school dean to admit Leffall. Leffall was accepted at Howard and graduated first in his class in 1952. During his fourth year at Howard, Leffall met his future wife, Ruth McWilliams. McWilliams would describe her initial impression of Leffall as
“..clean-cut, nice, intelligent, exceedingly kind to people and interested in his work." The couple would marry in 1956 and had one son, LaSalle “Donney” Leffall III, a graduate of Harvard Law School.
After completion of his surgical oncology fellowship, Leffall entered military service. He served as chief of general surgery at the U.S. Army Hospital, Munich, Germany (1960−1961). Before being deployed overseas with the Army Medical Corps, Leffall was assigned to a base in Texas. At one point during his service, he and three white fellow soldiers one day went to the movies; the attendant refused to admit Leffall. Leffall would later reflect that, “Of all the things I have experienced, I think that hurt worse than anything else. Here I am, on my way to help the men and women who are defending our country, and I can’t go to a movie with my colleagues.”
Throughout his life Dr. Leffall kept the principles of service and giving at the forefront. So much so that he and Mrs. Leffall won the the ACS Distinguished Philanthropist Award in 1998. This giant ultimately passed away on May 25, 2019 at the age of 89. Appropriately, rather than receiving flowers, the family requested that contributions be made to a newly created eponymously named scholarship endowment for students with financial need at Howard University College of Medicine.
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Black History Month 2021 I Surgeon Highlight