For retired professor I. Jerome Flance, more than 60 years of helping people as a doctor and teacher wasn’t quite enough. So six years ago, at age 87, he accepted the appointment of special associate for community redevelopment and began what is planned to be a 10-year project to revitalize the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood. Read more in the following article published by the St. Louis Jewish Light Simcha magazine.
(Republished with permission from the St. Louis Jewish Light Simcha magazine.)
Is retirement a simcha? When we put the question to I. Jerome Flance, M.D., the answer was a resounding “no” – at first.
“The best time of your life is when you’re in your 20s and 30s,” Flance said. “Nobody should be misled by this word retirement as indicating a great opportunity for joy, unless you’re fortunate enough to engage yourself in some activity that’s very positive and satisfying, not only for yourself but for other people.”
That’s exactly what happened for Flance, emeritus clinical professor of medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine. When he retired in 1998 at age 87, after a 63-year career in medicine, then-dean of the medical school, William Peck, asked Flance to become the school’s special associate for community redevelopment. He represents the Washington University Medical Center Redevelopment Corporation in its efforts to revitalize the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood, located directly south of the medical center.
“I have always been interested in community medicine,” Flance said.
In the 1960s, he formed a group that helped revitalize the Jeff-Vander-Lou area in north St. Louis.
“I learned a lot from that experience because we made all the mistakes in the book and you learn from your mistakes,” Flance noted. “I made up my mind if I ever got the chance to do this again, I’d know what not to do.”
From play to practice
Flance was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1911. He knew from an early age that he wanted to be a doctor.
“I give all the credit to my sister Lily,” he said. “When we played house and she assigned different roles to all the children, I was always the doctor. From then on, that was my role.”
Flance attended City College in New York, then came to St. Louis in 1929 to attend Washington University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1931 and medical degree in 1935. Flance also met and married his wife, Rosemary, here. He finished his residency training at Harlem Hospital in New York then returned to St. Louis and joined Washington University’s clinical faculty.
Trained as a lung specialist, partly in response to his own bout with tuberculosis, Flance became director of the university’s Pulmonary Service at the St. Louis Hospital and an attending physician at both Jewish and Barnes hospitals. In 1953, he initiated a hospital-based, home-care program at Jewish Hospital, serving as its director for 11 years. During that time, he started the first formal home-care program for tuberculosis in the United States. Also in 1953, after 11 years of solo practice, he and Michael M. Karl, M.D., professor of clinical medicine, established the Maryland Medical Group, where Flance practiced for 43 years.
“I don’t practice anymore but one of the partners there is my doctor!” Flance said.
He also was medical director of the St. Louis Lung Association, president of the medical staff of Jewish Hospital and a member of the St. Louis Lung Physicians to Combat Air Pollution.
Physician, educator and pulmonary disease specialist, Flance has had numerous scholarships and awards named in his honor. For example, in 1995 the School of Medicine established the Rosemary and I. Jerome Flance Professorship of Pulmonary Medicine, which supports research in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. Also, each year, the division invites a distinguished pulmonary physician as its I. Jerome Flance Visiting Lecturer. And the American Surgical Association’s Flance-Karl Award is presented to a surgeon in the United States who has made a significant contribution in basic laboratory research that has application to clinical surgery.
Furthermore, in 2002 Flance received an honorary doctor of humanities degree from Washington University.
“Dr. Flance has been one of the most outstanding physicians in our community for decades,” said Washington University Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. “He is a man of great sensitivity, dedication and commitment. During the past several years he has done a marvelous job in assisting with the redevelopment of the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood, and he has been a wonderful advisor to me and to the leadership of our School of Medicine. Jerry is a person of integrity and one who inspires trust. It was a privilege for me to award him an honorary doctorate at our commencement exercises in 2002.”
However, the most satisfying recognition he ever received, Flance says, was when his students at the School of Medicine named him Teacher of the Year.
Raw material
The 45-block Forest Park Southeast neighborhood is bounded by Interstate 64/U.S. Highway 40 on the north, Interstate 44 on the south, South Vandeventer Avenue on the east and southeast and South Kingshighway Boulevard on the west. About 4,000 people live there.
The Washington University Medical Center Redevelopment Corporation started to revitalize the area in 1995 when it received a $2.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. But things didn’t really get going until the medical school, the BJ Foundation and BJC put up another $11 million – and Flance got involved.
“When we got on board it was a very deteriorated area, full of crime, including drug dealing and an average of one murder a month,” Flance said. “The majority of the population was at the poverty level, with about a third of the households headed by a single female parent, usually unemployed and on welfare. There was no school or community center. The children were bused to about 30 different schools. It was just the perfect situation for developing the worst in human behavior.”
Flance immediately saw the need for a management team.
“I asked Richard Baron, chief executive officer of McCormack Baron Salazar, probably the best urban revitalization company in the whole United States, to look over our situation and we were on the same page,” Flance said.
Baron and Flance are still on the same page. In fact, they’ve known each other 35 years.
“He was my doctor,” Baron said. “He brings an extraordinary vision of community building and a sense about what has to happen in a very diverse neighborhood like Forest Park Southeast to ultimately rebuild that community for those who live there. Dr. Flance possesses the rare combination of someone extremely adept at understanding community policy with a very strong sense of mission.” Baron adds, “He’s one of the most delightful people I’ve ever met. He’s a mentor for sure and I always learn from him.”
Road to recovery
Under Baron’s management, FPSE community leaders, the medical center and Firstar Bank (now U.S. Bank) drafted a strategic neighborhood-redevelopment master plan that has the support of city and state officials, foundations and area businesses.
The basis of the plan, Flance said, is “in order to revitalize a bad ghetto area you have to do everything. The reason urban revitalization has failed in this country is that people leave something out.”
That’s the critical lesson Flance learned from Jeff-Vander-Lou. As a result, the FPSE master plan includes a school, a community center, jobs, security, crime reduction, early childhood programs, beautification, housing, new businesses, recreation and more.
“Everything follows the plan, but there are always holes that you fall into and have to climb out of,” Flance said. But despite those holes, Flance believes noticeable progress has been made. The biggest success was getting the St. Louis Board of Education to refurbish and reopen Adams School for kindergarten through fifth grade.
“It’s a neighborhood school that kids can walk to,” Flance said. “We also built a community center attached to the school, and the Cardinals built a baseball and soccer field behind it.”
Also, a new senior citizen assisted living center at Kingshighway and Manchester stands at the gateway into the area, and the Science Center and Children’s Hospital have built several new parks. In addition, a Head Start program has begun and a job training program also is underway.
“We got rid of several slum landlords and we have developed about 90 properties, 78 of which are subsidized and 12 are market price because we are committed to affordable, mixed income, integrated housing,” Flance said.
Mercantile activity on Manchester Avenue also is a big priority, he adds.
The security issue also is being addressed, Flance said.
“You can’t expect people to move into an area that’s crime-ridden. So we have worked very intimately with the police department and the narcotics squad and crime is way down now,” he noted.
“Last year there was not a single murder and the drug problem has been cleaned up to a great extent.” With all these activities happening simultaneously, “I attend a lot of meetings,” said Flance, who still goes to his medical school office every day. “But getting involved with people in the community is part of my job. I get to meet wonderful people I ordinarily wouldn’t meet.”
And the people he meets feel the same way about him. Sharonica Hardin, Adams School principal, said, “What impressed me most about Dr. Flance at our initial meeting were his compassion and love for the neighborhood, and his keen understanding of the importance of the school. He’s been a pillar, not just for his ideas but also for physically going out and bringing in additional monetary resources. He’s always asking me how can he make things better.”
To honor Flance’s tireless work on behalf of the school, Hardin said, the library is named the Dr. I. Jerome Flance Media Center. “His granddaughter, Leah, even held a book drive in her neighborhood for us,” Hardin says. “He’s very dear to me.”
Keep the glass half-full
Though his work at FPSE keeps him quite busy, Flance makes time for family, above all, taking care of Rosemary, who is disabled. His son Stephen, a community developer in Santa Fe, has three children. His daughter Patricia, past president of Shaare Emeth Congregation and a member of the Jewish Federation board, has five children. Flance also has three great-grandchildren and is very close with his nieces and nephews. He keeps in touch with all of them and occasionally travels to visit them – in between his obligations for Forest Park Southeast.
“Hillary Clinton was right, it takes a whole village! We need everybody and every bit of help to turn this neighborhood around,” Flance said. “But you have to be an optimist. The glass must always be half full. But I believe it can be done.”
And when it’s done in a few years, Flance will be 97.
“I tell the new medical school dean, Larry Shapiro, I’ll need a new job!”
Copyright 2004 St. Louis Jewish Light