Paul Block, Jr.'s vision founded MCO
UT professor Dr. Maurice Manning: ‘Without Paul, there would be no medical college.’
By Tom Henry / The Blade
Wed, 22 Jan 2020 00:46:24 GMT
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The late Paul Block, Jr., was fondly remembered Tuesday night by a distinguished University of Toledo scientist as the inspiration for the Medical College of Ohio in South Toledo, the forerunner to what has become the University of Toledo Health Science Campus.
“Without Paul, there would be no medical college,” Maurice Manning, distinguished UT professor of biochemistry and cancer biology, told about 25 people who attended his talk at the Toledo Club. The event was part of the Torch Club of Toledo’s fifth program of the 2019-2020 season.
Mr. Block, who was co-publisher of The Blade for 45 years, was truly a renaissance man, he said. In addition to running the newspaper, he was a journalist who had keen news instincts, a visionary, a civil rights advocate, a community leader, and a whole lot more, including a highly regarded organic chemist.
His specialty was chemistry of the thyroid hormone, and some of his ground-breaking work which appeared in 20 peer-reviewed publications from 1940 to 1986 earned him the reputation as a “virtuoso chemist,” Mr. Manning said.
Mr. Manning said he struck up a long friendship with him, and that the two would often meet at Mr. Manning’s UT laboratory to talk about science. Mr. Block also maintained a laboratory at his private residence, Mr. Manning noted.
He said he was impressed how his friend seamlessly balanced his mutual passions for journalism and science.
Mr. Block had a doctorate in organic chemistry, earned from a dissertation he submitted to Columbia University in New York in 1942, Mr. Manning said.
His undergraduate degree was from Yale University.
Many residents today may have heard of MCO before it became the Health Science Campus.
But they may not realize there were medical colleges before it that had failed, Mr. Manning said.
Now, with questions being raised about the future of the affiliated University of Toledo Medical Center, Mr. Manning said he is pleased to see key members of the community rallying around it. They include former Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner, AFSCME Local 2415 President Randy Desposito, Ohio Sen. Teresa Fedor, and others who have organized to advocate for UTMC to remain a teaching hospital amid growing fears that its mission could be derailed.
Because of the foundation laid by Mr. Block and others in the early days, the “educational aspect of MCO is continuing with great vigor and enthusiasm” and the community “is rallying around the research mission,” Mr. Manning said.
“I had tremendous admiration for Paul,” he said.
Ground-breaking on the former MCO’s first building was on Sept. 11, 1970. Mr. Block served as chairman of the medical college’s first board of trustees. He proposed the idea for the school a decade earlier, in 1960, to then-Blade associate publisher John D. Willey, Mr. Manning said.
During MCO’s dedication ceremony in 1969, then-Gov. James Rhodes said he knew of “no man more willing to work for the good of the community” than Mr. Block.
The late Toledo Mayor D. Michael Collins said in 2014 that Mr. Block made MCO possible “because of his science, because of his extreme knowledge, and [his] concerns about the human condition.”
Legislation signed on Dec. 18, 1964, by Governor Rhodes created the medical college, which supporters said would help to train more physicians to address doctor shortages and strengthen the quality of the area’s medical care.
Mr. Block was Blade co-publisher from 1942 until his death in 1987.