Two men who changed the face of medicine in Memphis in different ways will take their places in the Tennessee Health Care Hall of Fame Tuesday. They’ll be joining a rank of physicians, innovators and scientists whose achievements include firsts in several fields, including passing child-restraint laws and how we treat the terminally ill.

Click here to watch the induction:

William Evans, former CEO of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, spent his entire career at the hospital, starting in 1972 as a pharmacy tech.

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He retired in January after scaling several heights, including identifying the genetic abnormality that causes leukemia patients who inherit the gene to suffer such toxic reactions to their treatments, they would have to be stopped.

“Once we figured out what was going on at the DNA level, we could develop a genetic test, that we now use routinely, and it is used around the world to identify those kids before we ever treat,” said Evans, 71.

The puzzle was solved in Evans’ lab in 1995.

The Rev. Dr. Scott Morris was an associate pastor at St. John’s Methodist on Peabody for three decades. In the 1980s, the dilapidated boardinghouse – once a brothel – across the street at 1210 Peabody was an eyesore at best. Morris saw it as a place the church could serve the medically vulnerable.

The clinic – the Church Health Center – opened Sept. 1, 1987. Its staff saw 12 patients that day. Over the last five years, its outreach has grown to the point that in the last five years, Church Health has served 70,000 unique patients. Some of them came once. Some come every month. Almost none of them are insured.

“We take care of the people who work to make our lives comfortable,” Morris says. “They cook our food. They take care of our children. They wash our dishes. They cut our grass and one day, they will dig our graves.

“They don’t complain. And when they get sick, their options are very few.”

Morris, 68, is its founder, president and CEO. He also sees patients himself four days a week.

“If someone is cleaning my latrine, and they get sick I think they ought to be able to go to the front of the line.”

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About 85% of the patients have no insurance. Many work two or three jobs to get by.

Church Health, one of the city’s best-known charities, offers them medical care, including dental and behavioral health clinics, through a long list of physicians, psychiatrists and dentists that Morris, nearly single-handedly, has recruited to serve as volunteers. They see patients at Church Health’s offices at Crosstown Concourse or in dozens of private offices across the city.

For 34 years, the model the clerical staff at St. John’s dreamed up has worked so well, many, Morris says, call it Church Health magic.

“It’s not magic,” Morris said. “It’s a reflection of the kindness and generosity of our city.”

Church Health’s budget for this year is $25 million. More than half will come from donations, which tend to be from individuals.

Morris and Evans will be inducted Tuesday morning in a ceremony at Belmont University in Nashville.

The hall of fame was created six years ago by Belmont, the McWhorter Society and the Nashville Health Care Council to honor people who have made outstanding contributions to healthcare and who were born, lived or worked in Tennessee.

“Over the course of the past 18 months, the COVID-19 pandemic has refocused the spotlight on the health care industry and the important role health care professionals play in each of our lives,” said Dr. L. Gregory Jones, Belmont president. “Now, more than ever, we want to honor the leaders in this vital field, individuals who demonstrate the character, compassion and strength of purpose that quite literally transforms lives on a daily basis.”

The inductees are chosen by a committee made up of health leaders from across the state.

Due to the pandemic, this year’s ceremony will include the classes of 2020 and 2021. The 2020 inductees are: Monroe Dunaway “M.D.” Anderson; former governor Phil Bredesen; Dr. Kathryn M. Edwards; Donald S. MacNaughton; and Morris. The 2021 inductees are: Tom Cigarran; Autry O.V. “Pete” DeBusk; Evans, Dr. James E.K. Hildreth; and Dr. Robert Sanders.

One of Evans’ proudest moments was the day he was asked to be a member of the St. Jude faculty.

“I really didn’t know at the point if I was going to be a good enough researcher to be a successful faculty member,” he said in a phone interview Monday from his home in Nashville.

“I am going to join the organization and see how long I can hang on,” he said.

That was 1976. The halls of St. Jude were full of energy and entrepreneurial yearnings in those days, he said. Within 13 years of the hospital’s founding, it had gone from a 10% to a 50% cure rate for acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

“I wanted to be part of that,” Evans said.

Founder Danny Thomas and Dr. Don Pinkel, the hospital’s first director, wanted to build an institution based on inclusion and collaboration.

“They wanted people to work together. They felt that is how we were going to make progress,” Evans said. “The problem of children with cancer was too complex for any single discipline to solve.”

The philosophy was to get as many bright and committed people on the campus as could be and to eliminate the obstacles so they could do their best work in the collaborative, incremental way that science works, he said.

Although Evans’ career plan did not include becoming CEO, he took the reins when asked after mentor Dr. Art Nienhuis retired, and served from 2004 to 2014.

In those 10 years, the hospital’s fundraising surpassed $1 billion for the first time. It also had the only proton beam radiation therapy center devoted to children. The Pediatric Cancer Genome Project, the largest-ever investment in whole-genome sequencing of childhood cancers, launched under Evans’ leadership.

When Evans and a team of researchers in his lab discovered that genetic flaw could drastically change how a child metabolized cancer medication, they were able to reduce the dosage but still maintain the same therapeutic level.

For instance, a child who inherited the flawed gene from one parent represented about 10% of the cases at St. Jude.

Their treatment doses were cut in half. Children who inherited two flawed genes, one from each parent, represented about one in 200 patients. They could not metabolize the drug at all.

“We reduced their drug by 95%,” Evans said. “No one would ever do that without a reason.

“The cure rates were as good as any other children.”

Evans earned three consecutive National Institutes of Health MERIT Awards for the work from the National Cancer Institute.

He also is credited with identifying genetic differences in leukemia cells. “That led us to discover a couple of reasons why some kids are resistant to steroids,” he said.

When Evans left the executive suite, he returned to his laboratory at St. Jude to continue his research. Evans, who was born in Clarksville, is the only Tennessean elected to the German National Academy of Sciences. Its membership includes Darwin, Einstein and more than 30 Nobel laureates.

From the beginning, Church Health Center was a faith-based response to the issues of poverty and poor health. Morris saw them everywhere on lower Peabody.

“The driving force behind Church Health is not to solve the great social problems of America. We actually don’t know how to do that,” he says with a chuckle. “What we are trying to do is engage people of faith – Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu – we don’t care.”

Then Morris recruits physicians who see the patients, some every day and some in an annual emergency or two.

“Every doctor I know went to medical school primarily because they want to help people,” he says.

And even though “life happens” and circumstances change, “that is still their primary motivation. What Church Health has done is develop systems whereby all I ask of you is you give me your time. In 34 years, only one doctor has told me no, and he has since died.”

Morris made Church Health into the largest faith-based, privately funded health clinic in the country.

About 2,000 of Church Health’s patients are covered by the Memphis Plan, an insurance-like plan that cost $50 a month. It is tailored for small companies, self-employed people and those who work in others’ yards and homes. The patient load is split between Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare and Baptist Memorial Health Care. 

Morris had the idea one day in the shower, he says, and quickly set up an alliance with Memphis Medical Society to work out the details.

Things were going along swimmingly, he says, until he got a call one day from the state Department of Commerce and Insurance.

“We didn’t meet the rules to be an insurance company,” Morris says flatly.

“In my mind if something is illegal, but you know you are doing something that is right, the only rational thing to do is change the law.”

With the help of the Tennessee Medical Association and BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, the legislature passed the Memphis Plan Act of 1991, allowing the other cities in Tennessee to set up similar coverage programs.

No other city has. Morris is always surprised.

For bios on everyone who has been inducted into the hall of fame, go here.