Bobby Pass was an unusual
character and he didn't mind people thinking that. At 70, Pass was
the oldest chair of a department in the University of Kentucky. He probably
also held a chair’s post longer than anyone else in modern UK history,
too, having taken over the reins of the Department of Entomology in 1968,
when he was a young pup of 37. At an age when many an academic was consigned
to emeritus status, the venerable man with the white hair and the genteel
Alabama accent continued to build his department to be one of the premier
entomology departments in the United States.
With a heart of a young man— both literally and figuratively— Pass
witnessed great changes in the field of entomology. Remember, Rachel Carson
was searching for a publisher for Silent Spring when Pass was working on his
doctorate. He joined the faculty of the University of Kentucky in 1962, just
as Silent Spring was serialized in The New Yorker magazine to great acclaim,
as well as intense derision. It was an era of DDT, not IPM, when he was appointed.
It was a time of Spray ,em. Kapow. DIE. with regard to insects.
Soon after that Pass championed the holistic approach to pest management that
was a key to today’s standard, integrated pest management paradigm—
using pesticides only when necessary to control damaging insects.
The secret to Pass’ success as a department chair, it was said, came
from the fact that he encouraged his department to hire young, extremely talented
and enthusiastic scientists who have ideas and then let them loose to pursue
excellence. He cheerled more than directed, letting each young scientist
have his head in his research endeavors.
Bobby Pass
The
Man Who Wouldn’t Be Hero
Fifteen years later, Pass continued to be enthusiastic about life and entomology.
Still on immune suppressants to control rejection of the new heart, he had
bouts of infection from time to time. But nothing stopped him from pursuing
excellence in his duties as chair of the Department of Entomology.
If anything, his past 15 years of life have been a tribute to the uncounted,
faceless, and nameless researchers who conducted basic research that led to
the development of the protocol to allow heart transplants. Maybe that’s
why Pass was a champion of both basic and applied research and has built a
department second to none.
Bobby
Pass did indeed have the heart of a young man. In 1986, on a business trip
to China, Pass suffered congestive heart failure. Because of the intense difficulty
he experienced breathing, Pass stood in the back of the plane for the entire
return trip. Upon arriving in the U.S., Pass was admitted to a hospital in
Pittsburgh. There, as he put it, the physicians made him an offer he couldn’t
refuse: have a transplant or die. For Pass, still vigorous aside from his
bad heart, the decision was easy. He received a transplant from a young Canadian
who had died in a motorcycle accident. And as Pass said when this story was
being written, “Don’t make me the hero; make the Canadian who gave
me the heart the hero.”