John Davidson Constable, M.D., 1928 to 2016

On June 6, 2016, our world lost a truly unique and remarkable individual, John Davidson Constable (Fig. 1). John was in his 88th year of life. He had struggled with Parkinson’s disease for the past few years and died peacefully at home in Sherborn, Massachusetts, with his wife Sylvia and family at his side. In 1676, Isaac Newton wrote to Robert Hooke: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulder of Giants.” John Davidson Constable was one of those giants.Fig. 1.: John Davidson Constable, M.D., 1928 to 2016.John was born in London, England, to Olivia and William G. Constable. His family relocated to Boston when John’s father became a curator of the Museum of Fine Arts. John’s intellect and curiosity led him to Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. He was accepted as a surgical intern at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1953 and he completed his general surgical training, culminating in his appointment as chief resident in surgery in 1959. John completed a preceptorship in plastic surgery under Dr. Brad Cannon at the Massachusetts General Hospital. John was the first and only surgical resident to be chief surgical resident and then to train in plastic surgery. He was also the first person to train in plastic surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital and at Harvard. John served his entire clinical career at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He also served as chair of plastic surgery at the Shrine Burn Institute and at Mt. Auburn Hospital and he was a consultant in plastic surgery to many other institutions both in Boston and abroad. John was truly a Renaissance man, with interests broadly cast across the entire spectrum of human endeavor. The common denominator in John’s engagement was his insatiable curiosity. John’s friends outside of the Massachusetts General Hospital barely knew of his medical career and respected him as a major contributor in their sphere of interest. He was as knowledgeable about wildlife in Madagascar as he was about opera or fine art; he was an avid member of the World Wildlife Foundation, led Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology trips to India and Southeast Asia for over 20 years, and had a very loyal following. John was the longest-serving leader of The Speckled Band of Boston, a Sherlock Holmes society where his former official title was Keeper of the Band. In 1983, John received the prestigious Golden Door Award, given by the International Institute of New England to a foreign-born person who has had an extraordinary impact on the lives of others. At the awards dinner, seven people were chosen by the awards committee to speak of John’s accomplishments. Only one was a surgeon. The other six were experts and leaders from the broad array of John’s other interests. We will never forget John’s brilliant and curious mind, his rise to a challenge, and his love of the younger generation. John used to say that he got much more back from his students than he ever gave. We called him “The Bird” because of his tall, lanky appearance. When he retired several years ago and we honored him at a black-tie dinner at the Cosmos Club in Washington, John came dressed that evening as Big Bird, the Sesame Street character, and he stayed in costume for the entire evening. How can we ever forget the smile, the bushy eyebrows, and the twinkle in his eye when he solved a difficult problem or when he found or discovered something that he liked or wanted? He loved to travel and teach. And travel and teach he did—he was a citizen of the world. Whether it be Egypt, Newfoundland, or Vietnam, he found a way to get there multiple times over the course of the year. His manners were impeccable and he shared his love of animals, art, music, men’s clubs, and great food with all of us. John had a love affair with Vietnam and helping its downtrodden and very needy people. During the war, John was asked to be a civilian burn consultant to verify whether large numbers of children were burned secondary to the defoliant Agent Orange. John visited every one of the village hospitals in the South to verify that this was not true. In February of 1968, he was in Saigon at the time of the surprise Tet Offensive, the beginning of the end for the South and the Diem regime. U.S. troops pulled out in 1974 and Saigon fell in 1975. At the conclusion of the war, John was asked to return to Hanoi and Saigon to help rehabilitate plastic surgery, to treat severely burned children and those with congenital deformities. In the early 1980s, Vietnam was considered among the poorest countries on earth, after two wars of reunification, one with France and one with the United States, followed by decades of a devastating trade embargo imposed by the West. John had all of the political contacts and skills, and brought along two of his recent surgical graduates, Michael Moses and Bryant Toth (Fig. 2), and regularly returned to Vietnam to help teach young surgeons modern plastic surgery (Fig. 3). He created in the 1980s and 1990s the Indochina Surgical Educational Exchange, a foundation that helped train Southeast Asian surgeons in our extraordinary specialty of plastic surgery. We quickly realized that we could not single-handedly teach all of plastic surgery to all of Vietnam, so we began the process of bringing young Vietnamese plastic surgeons to Boston, New Orleans, and San Francisco for 3- to 6-month periods following the old proverb: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”Fig. 2.: Vietnam 1986: Bryant Toth, John Constable, and Michael Moses.Fig. 3.: Vietnam, 1988.In 1988, John and the Indochina Surgical Educational Exchange received the highest Vietnamese civilian award ever given for his work in Vietnam. Many of his former Vietnamese fellows have become the deans of medical and dental schools and now are the chiefs of surgery in Hanoi, Saigon, and Hue. In 2004, in honor of John’s lifetime of giving, his family, friends, and trainees established the John D. Constable Fellowship in Plastic Surgery through the American Association of Plastic Surgeons, providing an opportunity for surgeons from less developed countries to come to the United States to train. John’s life mission was always to help others, surgeons and patients, who were in need. He was indeed one of the first in our specialty to use medicine as a true currency for peace. John leaves behind his devoted wife Sylvia and their three daughters, Claire, Mia, and Isabel; their husbands Bruce Struminger, David Alexander, and Mogador Empson; and grandchildren. John is also survived by his younger brother, Giles. Thank you, John, for your friendship and wonderful mentorship to us all. You lived, led, and taught by example. We are sure that we are who we are, and do what we do, because of time spent with you. John Constable shared with us the fire that burned in his heart and he invited us, through his own generosity, to be open to the possibility that what he was to us, we might be to others. John has left a lasting mark on all of us who were privileged to know him. He was beloved by all and will be greatly missed.