A full life and career

Dr. Adel Afifi retires from the UI Carver College of Medicine after 23 years of service

In many ways, Dr. Adel Afifi's life has been shaped by the circumstances around him. He's experienced bombs, shelling, occupation and exile. War forced his family from his childhood home; later, it would force him from the Middle East altogether.

For one who has experienced such turmoil, Afifi ('64 R, '65 MS) has a calm, sweet demeanor that has endeared him to numerous colleagues, students and patients. As he entered retirement July 1, he preferred to reflect on his good luck'the United Nations scholarship that helped him through medical school, the happy irony of meeting his American wife in Beirut, the way he ended up at the UI 'than relate stories of bombs and destruction.

Born in Acre, Palestine, in 1930, Afifi went to Beirut when he was 16 to finish high school. Two years later, Acre was seized during the Arab-Israeli War. Afifi's parents moved to Lebanon as refugees and made it their home. Afifi enrolled in the American University of Beirut (AUB) to study medicine'a decision that wasn't entirely his own.

'My mother wanted one son to be a doctor, one to be a pharmacist, and one could do whatever he wanted. Being the youngest, I wanted to study Arabic literature. My oldest brother became a pharmacist. My other brother went to medical school, but fainted in his first anatomy lab. My father said to me, 'Well, you have to do it.' I was happy to please my parents, and it's turned out to be a truly gratifying career. My brother, by the way, went into political science.' He earned his MD at AUB, where he also met his wife, LarryAnna, a nursing student at the time. Originally from Montana, her father's job with a U.S. State Department program took them to Jordan.

After an internal medicine residency at AUB, Afifi came to the UI for a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroanatomy, and stayed to complete a neurology residency and master's degree in anatomy. Fellowships at New York Neurological Institute and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine followed. In 1965, the Afifis returned to AUB and made Beirut their permanent home.

Afifi spent the next 19 years as a neurology professor at AUB and often, a visiting professor at the UI. In addition to teaching and clinical work, his career included exploring the role of the substantia nigra in motor control, and developing experimental models of clinical neuromuscular disorders. For 12 years he was the associate dean at the AUB medical school and for a brief period was dean of Jordan University's College of Medicine.

When Israeli forces seized Beirut in 1982, Afifi and his family, which by then included 13-year-old son Walid and 17-year-old daughter Rema, decided to stay. The situation was tolerable'until a quiet evening at home was shattered by the blast of a bomb. A piece of shattered glass ruptured an artery in their son's wrist.

Afifi's colleagues urged him to leave Lebanon. Afifi recalls how, during a visit to the UI in 1983, the late Dr. Maurice Van Allen, then head of neurology, and Dr. William Bell, then the UI division head of child neurology, told him not to seek jobs elsewhere because they had a place for him at Iowa. In the fall of 1984, the Afifis moved to Iowa City.

Afifi's career flourished at the UI, earning him international recognition as well as the Regents Award for Faculty Excellence and the UI Collegiate Teaching Award. The two children are all grown up and the Afifis now have five granddaughters. Rema and her family live in Beirut, where she and her husband are both professors at AUB'Rema on the health sciences faculty and her husband on the medicine faculty. Their son, Walid, and his family live in Santa Barbara, Calif., where he and his wife are communication science professors. The Afifis plan to do more traveling to visit their grandchildren, but have no plans to relocate.

'Iowa City has been more than a place to work'it's a real home for us,' he said. 'During the Lebanese War, so many people from Iowa City went to great lengths to get in contact with us and check on us to see if we were okay. That's why this place is so close and dear to us.'