Chair, Committee on Cancer, 1959–1964

By Charles M. Balch, MD, FASCO, FACS

R. Lee Clark Jr. was born July 2, 1907, in Hereford, TX, and grew up in Wichita Falls. He graduated from the University of South Carolina with a degree in chemical engineering and went to the Medical College of Virginia, where he graduated first in his class in 1932. His surgical training was at the American Hospital in Paris, France, and then at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN. He began a busy private surgical practice in Jackson, MS, with a prodigious caseload of more than 600 major operations a year. He volunteered to join the U.S. Army Air Force where he served with distinction as chair of surgery at three military hospitals.

Dr. Clark was the first surgeon-in-chief and permanent director of the MD Anderson Cancer Hospital, leading the institution from 1946 to 1978. He performed major surgery until 1971, including major head and neck operations, thyroidectomy, mastectomy, radical melanoma and sarcoma surgery, gastric and abdominal-perineal resection, and, even, hemipelvectomy. He initiated major programs in radiation therapy and mammography breast screening and organized teams of specialists in a group practice conducting multidisciplinary cancer care.

Dr. Clark was a stalwart contributor to the American College of Surgeons for more than 35 years, beginning in 1942 when he first was admitted to the College after completing the American Board of Surgery exams. His greatest leadership role was with the Committee on Cancer, where Dr. Clark was an active member for 23 years (1947 to 1970); and most importantly served as its chair from 1959 to 1964. Under Dr. Clark’s leadership, the Committee was reorganized and revitalized. Dr. Clark and the Committee had a major role in developing uniform standards of cancer registries, implementing the American Joint Committee on Cancer Staging and End Results Reporting (under Dr. Murray Copeland), publishing the Manual for Cancer Programs (which defined minimum standards required for approval of a cancer service), establishing a new regionalization program, and organizing all the cancer educational programs for the College’s annual Clinical Congress and Sectional meetings. Importantly, he led a 10-year strategic plan (called the “Program of the Sixties”) to expand and revitalize the scale and scope of its activities to reorganize the Committee structure by including liaison members from other physician, oncologic, and hospital organizations, with the goal of accrediting cancer programs for all oncology specialties and improve the care of the individual cancer patient at the community level. In October 1964, he formally recommended a reorganization of the Committee on Cancer to the Board of Regents to assume an even greater role in the cancer community as the “Commission on Cancer,” which was approved and implemented in 1965. For his contributions to the cancer field and to the College, Dr. Clark received the ACS Distinguished Service Award in October 1969.

Dr. Clark was honored into membership by the James Ewing Society (now the Society of Surgical Oncology), the Southern Surgical Association, and the American Surgical Association and was a founding member of the Society of Head and Neck Surgery. The Society of Surgical Oncology honored him with the Lucy Wortham James Award (in 1965) and the James Ewing Lecture Award in 1977. Dr. Clark was an accomplished and busy clinical surgeon, a visionary and charismatic leader, and an organizational genius. Indeed, he was one of the first pioneers in the specialty of surgical oncology.