Baptist Physician Leaves Strong Legacy
Love of family, love of medicine, love of country…Dr. Harry F. Adler, M.D., Ph.D., of San Antonio was committed to all three.
His father, a bootmaker with the Russian army in the early 1900s, fled Russia into Germany where he met Cecilia Adler, his future wife and mother of his four sons. Having taken her surname when they married, the Adlers immigrated to the United States and settled in Chicago. Although three of the
Adler’s sons became attorneys, son Harry bucked that family tradition and became a physician, graduating from the University of Chicago and Northwestern University with both medical and doctoral degrees.
During World War II, Dr. Harry Adler conducted high altitude research at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio which led to the publication of a book in 1950 that came to be regarded as a classic review on altitude decompression sickness.
At Randolph AFB, Dr. Adler met his wife, Laura, of Kirby, Texas, who worked on the base processing pilots’ papers. She and Dr. Adler had two children, Phyllis, now a retired OB/GYN physician, and Max, now a dermatologist in Dallas. Although not formally trained, Laura developed great skill as a nurse. Early on, when Laura was apprehensive about giving penicillin injections, Dr. Adler had her practice piercing an orange with a hypodermic needle, over and over. One day, he left the room and instructed her to give a patient an injection. When the patient emerged from the room, he told Dr. Adler, “She gives better shots than you do, doc!”
Dr. Adler operated a family practice on the south side of San Antonio from 1949 to 1979, with Laura as his nurse. During the 1950s, he practiced seven days a week—8 a.m. to 5 p.m. with house calls often late into the night after coming home for dinner. It was often that Dr. Adler worked at his medical practice up to 60 hours a week. The charge for a house call? Five dollars.
Dr. Adler shared a great interest in history with his son Max. “Dad always read history and gravitated toward the European theater of operations in WWII,” remembers Max, “while I gravitated toward Pacific Theater. We had many lively discussions about what happened when, why things were done a certain way, and how each theater affected the other. Because Dad’s family had been Jewish, chances are if they had remained in Germany, they would’ve been exterminated. That weighed very heavily on him.” Although the Adlers no longer practiced Judaism after leaving Russia, his family still identified as Jewish.
In addition to his private practice, Dr. Adler also served as Chief of Staff at Baptist Medical Center and President of the Bexar County Medical Society. BMC was the only hospital in which he worked. His son Max, towards the end of his medical residency, did neonatal work at the same hospital. “We shared a Baptist tradition. One day I was walking down the hall out of the nursery and a group of doctors stopped and asked, ‘Are you Harry’s boy?’ These guys were very flattering about my dad.”
Dr. Harry Adler died in 1999; Laura Adler died ten years later. In 2012, their estate donated $1.5 million to their beloved San Antonio medical community. One million dollars were given to the University of Texas Health Science Center, and $500,000 were dedicated for the Harry F. Adler, M.D., Ph.D., Endowed Scholarship Fund for nursing students at the Baptist Health System School of Health Professions, established through the Baptist Health Foundation of San Antonio.
Cody S. Knowlton, President and CEO of the Baptist Health Foundation of San Antonio, said scholarships are the lifeblood of Baptist School of Health Professions students. The Adler gift will “undergird tuition of countless students until the Lord comes.”
Teaching and learning to inoculate those long-ago oranges yielded great results. Dr. and Mrs. Adler dedicated their lives to healthcare in San Antonio. They raised two children who served in medicine. Their gifts continue to train and equip young doctors and nurses. The Baptist Health Foundation of San Antonio is committed to helping more physicians explore ways they, too, can establish traditions of testamentary giving.
Many people who want to impact the health of the community well into the future like to name the Baptist Health Foundation of San Antonio as a beneficiary of these instruments:
- Wills and Bequests
- Life Insurance
- Retirement Assets (IRA, 401K, 403B, pension, or other tax deferred plans)
- Charitable Gift Annuity
- Charitable Remainder Trust
- Charitable Lead Trust
- Life Estate