Highlights

Whitney Shields, Class of 2010

Whitney Shields did not come to the UA to study pharmacy; she came to study math and science – and compete on the track team.
“After high school,” says Shields, who is from the Chandler/Tempe area, “I knew I wanted to come to the UA. I was good in math and science. I got an academic scholarship and a small athletic scholarship for my undergraduate education. I was a pole vaulter. I competed in high school and at the UA.”
Her highest vault? Twelve feet.
The best thing that happened to her while on the track team? She met her future husband, Sean.
“On the Friday before the Sunday on which I got married,” says Shields, “I found out I had been accepted into the UA PharmD program. I was screaming with excitement. It was one of the best days of my life.”
According to Shields, the flexibility of the pharmacy profession appeals to women: you can work part time and still make a good living.
“I really have it all,” says Shields. “A husband who’s totally supportive, a job I enjoy, a beautiful baby and another one on the way! I had my first child, Kendyl Alexis, during my fourth year of pharmacy school. I finished my second rotation on a Thursday, had her on Saturday, took six weeks off, and then went back to rotations at the end of September.”

December 7, 2011, 3:21 pm

Categories: Alumni-Donors
Daniel Massey, Class of 2010

Dan Massey’s path to pharmacy school was filled with many challenges. All through his undergraduate career he was bound to a wheelchair. He had developed an infirmity that caused so much pain that he could not walk. Eventually his doctors presented him with a chilling choice that goes against normal intuition: remove your legs, in order to walk.
Thus, three months before he started pharmacy school, Massey had his legs amputated from the knee down.
“It was either that or stay in the wheelchair, in pain, and not be able to be very mobile. I was fitted for prosthetics in my first year at COP and then spent the first year and a half going through physical therapy learning to walk again.”
Massey was also a husband, father of two teenage girls and a full-time caregiver for his ailing father.
“I was one of the older students. My biggest challenge was balancing family life and studying. I started at age 36 and graduated at 40. I took care of my father full-time during the beginning of pharmacy school. He passed towards the end of my fourth year.
“I think my life experiences shaped me and made me more empathic with patients that I speak with at the hospital. I have the life experience to relate to many of them.”
Given all the challenges, struggles and sacrifices, would he do it again?

December 7, 2011, 3:13 pm

Categories: Alumni-Donors
Charles Kendrick, Class of 1955

Charles Kendrick embarked on the road to pharmacy school from a very humble beginning. His first job was working at the Texarkana, Texas, stockyards, in the 1940s. It was difficult and dangerous work, especially for a 10-year-old boy.
“When the white kids showed up for work,” he says, “they would hire us [the black kids] to work for them. They were getting 35 cents an hour, so they would hire us for 20 or 25 cents. The last day I worked there, it was raining and thundering and some razorbacks got into the wrong pen.”
Razorbacks are ill-tempered and aggressive hogs. Mature males can grow to five feet in length and weigh up to 300 pounds.
“They wanted me to go separate the hogs,” explains Kendrick. “I was just a young kid and so decided just to go home. I never did get my money from the kid who hired me. He was H. Ross Perot.” Smiling, Kendrick adds, “He still owes me for two hours of work.”
Kendrick’s father moved to Tucson in 1935; Kendrick moved to the Southwest to join him in 1948. It was in Tucson that he finally got his opportunity to attend pharmacy school.

December 7, 2011, 2:16 pm

Categories: Alumni-Donors
Yvonne Anderson Windham, Class of 1952

Yvonne Anderson Windham has seen enormous change at the UA College of Pharmacy since she started attending here in 1948.
“Students now have so much more knowledge,” she says. “That’s partly because more knowledge has become available. When I started pharmacy school, we were taught natural medicines. Then more information about chemical medications became available. Interestingly, now the field is moving back to natural substances.
“The course structure is completely different now, too. We were the last class that finished in four years. The first two years were called prepharmacy, the second two years were spent in the College of Pharmacy. We had to take engineering physics.
“One thing hasn’t changed, though. It’s funny: The courses we flunked are the same courses students flunk now.
“In my class, three women graduated. There weren’t many women going to pharmacy school in the 1940s. It was difficult for some. In fact, after graduation, two of the women in the first few classes committed suicide. The deaths were probably due to personal problems, because both were excellent students.”
When Windham entered the college in 1948, there were 4,800 students at the UA. In 1952, thanks to returning veterans going to school on the GI bill, there were 12,000.

December 7, 2011, 1:01 pm

Categories: Alumni-Donors

Highlights

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