Gerald “Charlie” Westbury
BMJ 2014; 349 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g6405 (Published 14 November 2014) Cite this as: BMJ 2014;349:g6405
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Excellent obituary on "Charlie" Westbury, whom I knew & respected as a surgical friend &, in later years, as a very generous donor & serious charity worker, and a stalwart friend & supporter of Israel. I knew him better when he was Chair of the Barclay Trust which funded Israeli post-grad. students who wished to study in the UK & needed grants.
I was sorry the Obit. did not highlight these activities more. I believe Charlie would have approved.
I am happy for this to be published as a Letter.
Sincerely,
Stuart Stanton. (Prof.)
Competing interests: No competing interests
The obituary by David Payne on Gerald Westbury (BMJ 6th Dec) was a fine tribute to one of the UK’s surgical giants. However, I was surprised that the article contained not a word of reference to the considerable contribution made by ‘Charlie’ Westbury to the increasingly serious scourge of malignant melanoma.
He treated many patients with this condition and, long before many other colleagues, always considered the disease holistically. Demonstrating that the very best surgeons contribute far outside their immediate brief of excision and repair, he worked on and published research on immunotherapy and oncology in melanoma. This visionary multidisciplinary approach also involved Westbury as a co-founder of the Melanoma Study Group, the principal UK forum for advancement of knowledge on this disease. As a junior plastic surgical trainee in the early 1980s, I vividly recall attending and learning much from his lively, inspiring and sometimes irreverent chairmanship of this group at its early meetings in the boardroom of the Royal Marsden Hospital.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Re: Gerald “Charlie” Westbury
Many thanks to Professor Stanton and Mr Mahaffey for their feedback and I am delighted that they have used rapid responses to share their knowledge of Professor Westbury. This is something we are trying to encourage at The BMJ.
It was a true pleasure to write this obituary, and I am grateful to Dr Charlotte Westbury, his daughter, and former colleagues, for their help in my research.
The challenge was to fit so full a life into the word count for a long obituary destined also for The BMJ print issue, and include also some material that had not made it into other published obituaries, such as the one in the Daily Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11026439/Professor-Gerald-Cha....
When Dr Westbury sent me some follow-up thoughts about her father (after we had recorded the audio interview embedded in the article), she described his appreciation of the importance of collaboration between science and medicine, which I was anxious to include.
I wish I had had more space to include not only the professional, but the personal - his love of jazz, crosswords, music (not opera!), and words, not to mention The Barclay Trust and malignant melanoma.
I would have loved to include the poem sent by Dr Westbury to her father on a visit to Wray Castle in Cumbria, built by retired Liverpool surgeon James Dawson, which she felt described her father perfectly:
Douglas Pearce, who graduated at the same time and was a member of The 18 Club which met annually for all those years, inspired me to suggest to the editor of Student BMJ that we write about the enduring friendships that are forged at medical school.
I hope more readers share their memories of Professor Westbury.
Competing interests: No competing interests