Lewis Greer Zirkle, Jr. '62 
(Year Awarded--2002)

In 1972, at his tenth Davidson reunion, Lew Zirkle quoted a 13th-century philosopher, offering advice to Davidsonians of the day: "One must not think so much about what one should do, but what one should be. Our works do not enable us, but we must enable our works." Even then, Lew's journey of "enabling his works" had taken him far from home into the horrors of the Vietnam War, as an orthopedic surgeon drafted into the U.S. Army in 1968 out of his residency at Duke Medical Center. In Vietnam, he treated military personnel and spent his free time caring for sick and injured Vietnamese civilians. He could not have known then that he would return there many times on medical missions. But return he did, to Vietnam and many other underdeveloped countries, where the people have benefited enormously from Lew's work.

From the early 1970s, Lew has traveled far, wide, and often in service to his fellow man, beginning with medical mission projects for the non-profit Orthopedics Overseas Inc., for which he chaired Indonesia operations. In the decades since, he has made scores of trips to developing nations to train and educate medical personnel and to treat citizens for whom orthopedic health care is an impossible dream.

For his volunteer service and leadership, Lew received the Kiwanis World Service Medal in 1997, joining a pantheon of such humanitarian luminaries as Rosalyn Carter, Audrey Hepburn, and Mother Teresa the very person Lew sought to emulate. In 1999, Lew's passion for helping those in dire need of orthopedic care culminated in his founding of the Surgical Implant Generation Network--or SIGN--which manufactures high-quality surgical implants and facilitates the exchange of professional experience and medical information among surgeons. Already since its founding, Lew's leadership of SIGN has made possible new and expanding medical mission projects throughout Southeast Asia and Central America.

In the fall of 2001, Lew won the Humanitarian Award at the Duke Medical Alumni Awards Luncheon and Annual Meeting, one of only six people ever to be so honored. The network of training, supplies, and healing that he has established is changing the face of orthopedic injury in countries where such accidents can mean the difference between being able to work and support a family, or not--even the difference between life and death.

Because you embody the humanity of world service; because your career exemplifies the elegant simplicity of that long-ago exhortation for us to "enable good works"; because you have provided extraordinary service to the world community, demonstrating leadership through servant hood in the spirit of Davidson's fifteenth president, John W. Kuykendall, and because you make Davidson proud to claim you as her own, the Davidson College Alumni Association proudly honors you, Lewis G. Zirkle, Jr., with the John W. Kuykendall Award for Community Service, on the occasion of the class of 1962's 40th Reunion, April 20, 2002.