With a Personal Touch
When Mac Donald Holmes DVM ’61 started veterinary practice in rural upstate New York, he knew that relationships would play a vital role in his success.
“From a professional perspective, you want to continually strengthen your relationships with clients,” said Dr. Holmes, who operated a mixed animal practice for many years in a farming community. “Repeat service to clients is especially important when you live in a small community. But building relationships was about more than this. One of the reasons I wanted to become a veterinarian was to work with the clients. The friendships I formed were important to me.”
For Dr. Holmes, these client relationships were personally rewarding. One of them, though, will also advance companion animal research at the College.
Byron Hipple, owner of a Dandy Dinmont Terrier, was one of Dr. Holmes’ regular clients. Recalling him as “sincere, humorous, and a very genuine person,” Dr. Holmes was overwhelmed upon learning that Hipple had used his estate to augment an endowed fund to support small animal research in Dr. Holmes’ name. According to the will, Hipple did this to honor the “veterinarian who acquainted him with the capabilities of the Cornell University Hospital for Animals to care for his terrier.”
“It is particularly gratifying because I was a general practitioner,” said Dr. Holmes, who encourages aspiring veterinarians to learn about all species. “Being a veterinarian is rarely a one-species profession.”
The endowment earnings for the Small Animal Research Fund will help support the Collaborative Research Program administered by the College’s Research Office. If the earnings are not fully used by that program in any given year, the residual funds help support new faculty research activities to assist in their startup at Cornell.
As part of the Collaborative Research Program, post doctoral research awards have been funded to support several researchers, including Drs. Teresa Gunn, Sydney Moise, Lisa Fortier, Ruth Collins, and Tracy Stokol for the past several years. The residual funding has been used in recent years for faculty startup for departmental research activities conducted by faculty, including Drs. Dan Fletcher, Jennifer Rawlinson, Peter Scrivani, Anna Gelzer, and Ursula Krotscheck.