In Burt Russell Shurly; A Man of Conviction, A Life in Medicine and Education, 1871-1950, Robert Vanderzee continues the story of the Shurly family, focusing on a physician and educator who, with the help of his mentor, chose medicine over the military life his father had planned for him.

Vanderzee, the oldest grandson of Burt Shurly, relies on his extensive research into family archives, records, and scrapbooks to share memories of a man who married into the wealthy Palms family of Detroit, excelled in his career, and personally saved his alma mater from bankruptcy. Vanderzee chronicles Shurly's life and career, which included serving as a medical officer during the Spanish- American War, commanding a medical unit in France during World War I, and later leading the fight against diphtheria, typhoid, and tuberculosis while establishing the controversial Shurly Hospital.

Interweaving local history, family letters, newspaper articles, and personal anecdotes, Vanderzee provides an intriguing glimpse into the life of a remarkable man who was gifted with intellect, enormous personal energy, and a keen sense of humor-and used those attributes to earn success for himself, his family, and his community during an fascinating period in Detroit history.

BURT RUSSELL SHURLY

A MAN OF CONVICTION; A Life in Medicine and Education, 1871–1950By Robert Vanderzee

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Robert Vanderzee
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-7526-2

Contents

Preface...........................................................xiChapter One Born on the Fourth of July...........................1Chapter Two The Mentor...........................................17Chapter Three The Spanish-American War...........................30Chapter Four Family..............................................52Chapter Five Burt Shurly's Career................................88Chapter Six The Detroit College of Medicine......................92Chapter Seven World War I........................................97Chapter Eight The Detroit Board of Education.....................122Chapter Nine The Shurly Hospital.................................139Chapter Ten The Chronicles End...................................151Epilogue..........................................................155Acknowledgments...................................................160Appendix..........................................................163Bibliography......................................................165Notes.............................................................169Index.............................................................179

Chapter One

Born on the Fourth of July

If a man has a very decided character, has a strongly accentuated career, it is normally the case of course that he makes ardent friends and bitter enemies.

—Theodore Roosevelt

As the young doctor and viola, his wife of seven years, stepped out of Detroit's First Unitarian Church on Cass Avenue on that bright spring day in 1913, the funeral services of his uncle, Ernest Lorenzo Shurly, had just ended. The young doctor's mind was swirling. He had, of all things, just purchased his troubled alma mater, the Detroit School of Medicine, in an auction. And so, at the relatively young age of forty-one, he was the first and only man in America to own outright his own medical school. Adding to his burdens, he and his late uncle, a doctor of international repute, had been in the midst of converting the medical office building they shared on Detroit's West Adams Avenue into a badly needed hospital. Now his revered mentor and partner was gone.

This young doctor was Burt Russell Shurly, a man who would excel in the professions of both medicine and education. He was born auspiciously on July 4, 1871, in Chicago, to Augusta and Edmund Shurly, who had been transferred there from Buffalo by the US Army during the Civil War. After mustering out of the army, Burt's father decided the family would remain in Chicago for much the same reason that people today move to places like Phoenix, Orlando, or Silicon Valley: Chicago was a major growth center in the United States, probably growing faster than any other city had before or since.

Burt was just three months old when the Great Chicago Fire consumed the family home, his father's new business, and over half of the entire city. More than two hundred fifty people perished in the twenty-four hours it took the fire to devastate Chicago. Years later, Burt explained it all quite succinctly in a short autobiographical sketch: "I was born one Fourth of July, 1871, and never got over it."

Burt's family was financially ruined by this "Great Fire" and was forced, along with so many others, to seek temporary shelter in Highland Park, just north of Chicago, in what must have been squalid conditions. Nine years before all this happened, Edmund and Augusta had lost their three-year-old daughter, Edna, to diphtheria, and now, after a year in Highland Park, the dreaded illness struck the family again. Burt's brother, Arthur, age eight, succumbed to the disease. So now, with only an infant son left to comfort them, their daily lives were filled with a fear that Burt, too, would be taken from them by the disease. Burt, however, was spared, and his future accomplishments would substantially balance the ledger.

Burt was named after a good friend of his father, with whom his father had served while on active duty with the army at Fort C. F. Smith in the Montana Territory: Captain Andrew Sheridan Burt. A journal written by Captain Burt's wife, Elizabeth, tells a great deal about life at the fort in those days and often mentions her husband's friendship with Lieutenant Shurly. Burt Shurly's middle name was taken from Fort D. A. Russell, located near Cheyenne, Wyoming, where in 1868 his father finally reunited with Augusta after his harrowing adventures on the Bozeman Trail and his bloody battles with the Sioux.

Burt was born when the Shurly family lived in Chicago on Madison Street, in the house that would be destroyed by the fire. By the time Burt entered school, the family had returned to Chicago from Highland Park and was living at 3220 South Calumet Avenue. In those days, Calumet Avenue was the center of an excellent neighborhood. Burt was, as he put it in his brief autobiographical sketch, part of "a fine bunch of boyhood friends" who enjoyed snowball fights, baseball, and the usual childhood mischief: breaking windows, smoking cigarettes, and stealing pigeons. Burt went on to write that when some of these nefarious deeds were discovered, his mother, rather than applying a good spanking, put him to bed with nothing to read but the Episcopal Catechism. When his father came home after these sessions, he would talk with Burt late into the evening.

Burt thoroughly enjoyed his school days. He attended the Douglas School, and it was there that he first exhibited the extraordinary energy and personal popularity that would distinguish him for the rest of his life. He developed a wide range of interests, from butterfly and stamp collecting to baseball, pitching every Sunday for the Douglas School baseball team. He took piano lessons for one year but gave them up because the lessons interfered with outdoor sports. During his later years at Douglas, he organized the Douglas School Cadets and, as captain, learned the rudiments of infantry drill.

In 1882, when Burt was eleven, his father founded the Shurly Watch and Jewelry Manufacturing Company at 77 State Street. At that time, it was fashionable to give young ladies silver or gold thimbles as Christmas or engagement presents. During school vacations, Burt helped his father selling these and other articles of jewelry.

All this extracurricular activity, however, did not interfere with Burt's studies. He was a brilliant student, second in his class when he graduated from high school in 1888. Moreover, he liked his teachers, especially Miss Christian and the school's principal, Mr. Orville T. Bright, who were romantically involved. They apparently liked and trusted Burt, for they chose him to carry notes back and forth to each other during their courtship. Mr. Bright later became superintendent of Cook County schools and was sufficiently impressed with Burt's academic record to offer him a teaching position at Blue Island School after graduation, for the then-impressive salary of seventy-five dollars per month. Burt intended to go on to college, and he declined the offer.

During his high-school days, Burt developed a strong love for baseball and used his profits from cutting and watering neighborhood lawns to watch the Chicago White Stockings (later to become the Chicago Cubs). Years later, he still could name the players of the team he watched: Flint and "$10,000 Kelly" were the catchers, Corcoren and Galpin were pitchers, Captain Anderson was first base, Guest was second base, Wilkinson was shortstop, Bums played third base, Dalrimple was left field, Gore played center field, and Sunday was right field. Burt particularly remembered some exciting games between Buffalo and the Detroit Wolverines (renamed the Tigers in 1895) and the fact that the crowd threw seat cushions at the umpire when they disagreed with his decisions.

Burt's mother suffered from asthma and arthritis, and when Burt was in his teens, the family decided that a trip to New Orleans would help relieve her discomfort. Burt went along on the extended visit, and this may have been his introduction to the wiles of the opposite sex. He wrote in his autobiographical sketch that in New Orleans, he "took French lessons from the three delightful De Pauncho daughters and failed to learn much more than `Ah, la jolie poulet!'" Knowing his thirst for knowledge and his sense of humor, one must suspect that, for this incident to have been mentioned in his memoirs, he learned a great deal more from these "delightful" girls than just the French language. Perhaps his conscience was eased a bit by his attendance in Sunday school at a New Orleans Episcopal church, which was headed by the popular but controversial Reverend Holland, who had been a rector in Chicago's Trinity Episcopal Church years before.

The trip south did little to alleviate his mother's ailments, so she next traveled north to Sparta, Wisconsin, near La Crosse. There she found noticeable relief. The Sparta climate was so beneficial to his mother's health, in fact, that they made the town a kind of "home away from home," staying for periods of up to a year at a time. They stayed at the Warner House residence hotel while in Sparta, and Burt quickly formed close friendships with the local children his age. They apparently were another "fine bunch of boyhood friends," for Burt reports that they "stole watermelons out of a convent yard, played baseball, [played] croquet on a croquet field [behind] the Warner House," went trout fishing, and sledded down hills in the winter.

Burt also became good friends with both the engineer and the district passenger agent for the Chicago & North Western Railroad, which passed through town on its way to Viroqua, about fifteen miles south of Sparta. When he was not in school, Burt met the trains in Sparta, taking care of the baggage and yelling, "Right this way for the Warner House. Free bus to and from. Mineral water in each and every room. No cause for dyspepsia or any other disease, for the mineral water will surely cure!" His father had received a lifetime railroad pass from the president of the Chicago & North Western Railroad for helping save the railroad rolling stock during a rebellion by Confederate prisoners of war at Chicago's Camp Douglas, and Burt put the pass to good use visiting La Crosse, the Wisconsin River Dells, and the nearby town of Castle Rock.

Burt went to high school in Sparta for one very cold winter, when the temperature once reached, he said, forty-three degrees below zero. He had one vivid recollection of this school. The school day was opened as usual with the Lord's Prayer and recital of the twenty-third Psalm. During one of the classes, two large farm boys near him threw spitballs. The teacher caught them doing it and beat their hands with a ruler. That was the first Burt had seen of corporal punishment. He later wrote that it made a very strong impression on him and the rest of the class.

The family moved back to Chicago for Burt's last year in high school, and when he graduated from the Douglas School on Friday, June 29, 1888, as salutatorian, he received a silver medal for his essay on patriotism. The excellence of this essay was a credit not only to his abilities, but also to his knowledge of his father's illustrious army experience during and after the Civil War. His father's military career would influence Burt for the rest of his life, and he would later write that "The instincts of patriotism were indelibly written through my entire life through the military interest and loyalty of my father."

It's interesting to note that during his high-school commencement program, the essay Burt delivered was one of eight with imposing titles such as: "Street Car Cable System," by Arthur Winslow; "Republican Aristocracy," by Louise Scharff; and "Edison's Phonograph," by Irwin Rosenfels. These titles suggest that Burt had tough competition while earning his scholastic honors.

After high school, Burt tried to enter the United States Military Academy at West Point, and, in August 1888, he took its entrance examination. A newspaper article in a Chicago newspaper noted the event:

August 25, 1888 Competing for West Point

Yesterday morning the competitive examination for admission to the United States Military Academy at West Point was held at the Hyde Park High School, under the charge of the principal W. H. Ray. The twelve who were examined, and who had previously passed a physical examination in the city, were Michael G. Siddall, Herbert B. Crosby, Frederick Grimme, J. R. Sloan, James B. Beckett, Eugene G. Fassett, Julian M. McDermid, George A. Collom, Charles H. Tobey, Bert R. Shirley [sic], George H. Pattison, and F. L. Munson. The examination consisted of thorough written work in United States history, geography, arithmetic, English grammar, writing, and spelling, and in oral work in reading. The two who stand the highest will be recommended by Congressman Dunham for appointment as cadet and alternate in the academy to report for duty June 1, 1889.

Penciled on one side of the article in the Shurly scrapbook is the notation: "Burt R. Shurly passed." In fact, however, Burt was not accepted by the academy. This was a tremendous disappointment for him. Because of his father's influence and military background, both he and his father had assumed all through high school that he would follow a military career. This rejection was a major turning point in his life and certainly contributed to his eventual decision to enter the medical profession. Rather than let this setback defeat him, however, Burt stiffened his determination to excel in all his endeavors.

Why Shurly was rejected by West Point is a complete mystery. He was a fine young man, short and athletic in stature, in robust health, a born leader, and driven to succeed. He was gregarious and friendly, and he always respected the dignity and importance of his fellow man regardless of rank or station in life. Burt had a great sense of humor and loved hearing a good story as well as telling one. His chuckle upon hearing an amusing tale, unique to the Shurly family, simply added to its humor. He genuinely liked people and liked being in their company. On top of all this, he had an unusually creative mind and sharp intellect. All these qualities would carry him far in the career that he was to follow.

As an alternative to West Point, Burt entered and graduated from Northwestern Military Academy, located in Highland Park, Illinois. Colonel H. P. Davidson, who wanted to develop his students into "useful and successful citizens," to instill good morals, American ideals, and physical and social attributes, founded the academy. Davidson wanted his boys to be virile and completely "free from snobbishness." As its 1931 Year Book later pointed out, "The diploma of the academy, like that of West Point and Annapolis, carries with it a recommendation not only as to the young man's scholastic attainments but as to his preparation for life physically, morally, and socially, and for the performance of his duties as a good citizen."

After Northwestern, Burt entered the University of Wisconsin and earned excellent grades, achieving a bachelor of science degree. He joined the Delta Upsilon fraternity and was tennis champion of the school, manager of its football team, and campus newspaper editor. He graduated in 1893, completing a four-year course in just three years.

Now a major decision concerning Burt's future had to be made: would it be a military career or something else? At this point, Burt's father's youngest brother, Dr. Ernest Lorenzo Shurly, intervened and proposed that Burt attend medical school. Most likely, Ernest offered to pay any college expenses Burt's father could not meet, so his advice carried considerable weight. And after all her worry over whether Edmund would ever return from war, it would not be surprising if Augusta had sided with Ernest. Burt was soon convinced to enroll in the Detroit College of Medicine, certainly to his father's disappointment.

Shurly family letters and scrapbooks reveal a seemingly insignificant detail that may in fact suggest a family rift over Burt's choice of career. All of Burt's many letters written after this time, detailing his medical as well as his military experiences, are addressed only to his mother—never to his father. Not a single saved letter so much as inquires as to his father's wellbeing, even though some of his letters ask about the health of his aunt, "Sizzie," Uncle Ernest's wife. If there were letters written to or about his father, they are lost. We can only hope that Burt's decision to enter the medical field did not divide the family. In any event, we know from Burt's later comments about the patriotism his father instilled in him that his son always revered Edmund Shurly.

Uncle Ernest Shurly's advice to burt was sound. Exciting advances were being made in medical knowledge in the 1890s, and, to keep pace, the Detroit College of Medicine, under the strong leadership of Dr. Eugene Skinner, greatly expanded its programs and tightened its standards.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the medical profession was entering one of its several "golden ages." The results of Louis Pasteur's studies into germ theory, Rudolf Virchow's studies into cellular structure, and Joseph Lister's into antiseptic surgery were finally being put into practice to help patients. The fields of histology, pathology, and bacteriology were emerging and being defined in textbooks for student doctors. Despite widespread skepticism that would extend, surprisingly, well into the twentieth century, the germ theory was being taught in the Detroit College of Medicine as well as in the other, more advanced medical schools. None of this went unnoticed by a general public that was at last becoming confident in the medical profession's ability to effectively treat such scourges as smallpox, typhoid fever, and diphtheria.

(Continues...)

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