Burke 'Mickey' Syphax dies at 99; led Howard University's Department of Surgery: Burke 'Mickey' Syphax, 99, who led Howard University's Department of Surgery for more than a decade during one of its most difficult periods and helped train most of Washington's African American surgeons, died July 19 of kidney failure at Howard University Hospital.In 1950, Dr. Syphax was a young faculty member at Howard when Charles R. Drew -- whose pioneering work on blood-plasma storage techniques revolutionized the medical field -- died suddenly after a car accident on his way to a conference in Alabama.
At the time, Drew was head of Howard's surgery department and a powerful force in directing the school's surgical training program, which had been established in 1936. His death left a void sensed by colleagues as well as students.
'You wondered: Could the school continue to exist? He cast that kind of shadow,' LaSalle D. Leffall Jr., a medical student at the time, said of Drew.
