D. Verne McConnell ’55

Verne McConnell died July 22, 1996, at his home in Wheeling, W. Va., where he had lived for 23 years. He had been diagnosed with colon cancer barely a year earlier.

Verne graduated from Toronto [Ohio] H.S. and Mercersburg Academy. At Princeton he played football (until a knee injury stopped him), majored in biology, and joined Cap and Gown and the Flying Club. He went to Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons and was trained in surgery at John's Hopkins, Vanderbilt, and UCLA.

Verne practiced plastic and reconstructive surgery in L.A. and taught at UCLA until 1973, when he returned to the Ohio Valley and founded a practice in Wheeling. He twice went to Ecuador with a nonprofit plastic surgery team and also worked one summer at the Indian Services hospital in Gallup, N. Mex.

Classmates remember Verne for his determination, curiosity, wide reading, and irreverent humor. A onetime patient remembers that when other doctors planned to amputate his foot, Verne insisted, "No, no, no! I can fix that," and did.

The class offers its sincere sympathy to Verne's wife, Jane, and the children they reared, Matthew, Kathleen, Sarah, and William. He was a distinguished surgeon and a valiant man.

The Class of 1955