Legacy of Excellence Digital Flipbook

LEGACY OF EXCELLENCE: HAROLD C. (RICK) PILLSBURY III, MD PRESIDENT FROM 1998 – 1999

H arold C. Pillsbury III, MD, had always wanted to be a general surgeon, just as his grandfather in Baltimore, Maryland, had been. Yet, when he finished medical school and began his residency in general surgery at the University of North Carolina, he quickly saw that those in otolaryngology were “happy people.” He liked being around them and gravitated toward them. “Fortunately for me, somebody in the program dropped out and I just snuck right into the new spot. It was just a magical opportunity for me,’’ he recalled. “I loved it.” During his residency, Dr. Pillsbury wrote numerous research papers and then decided to pursue academic medicine. As his residency concluded, the department chair, Newton D. Fischer, MD, suggested that Dr. Pillsbury work with John Kirchner, MD, the chair at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. “I never even looked at other jobs. I just took the job they offered me, he recalled.” In 1977, he became an assistant professor at Yale, which offered great opportunities in research and where he received a teacher investigator award for the National Institutes of Health. “And I did research and published a lot, and I enjoyed the Academy, which at that time had a very robust research arm.” That led to his engagement in the Home Study Course and presenting at the Annual Meeting. “I just loved the whole opportunity to be involved,” he recalled. He also built broad relationships within the specialty with these activities. “Paul Ward [MD] from UCLA was very influential to me at that time… sort of like my uncle. And Bob Cantrell [MD], Bobby Alford, MD, and George Sisson, MD, they were great people to be my mentors and role models.”

In 1982, Dr. Pillsbury’s career was shifting. He returned to North Carolina from Yale and took over the role of division chief following in Dr. Fischer’s footsteps. Under Dr. Pillsbury’s direction, the Division of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery became a department in 2001. In his roles at the Academy, he went from being in the Home Study Course to Coordinator for Education in 1989. With his AAO-HNS roles enlarged, his involvement in the Board of Governors followed from 1989-1995. “I thought the Board of Governors had a lot of good things going on . . . I got to know Jim Denneny

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