PROFILE IN GIVING
The Promise of Possibility
Dr. George P. Sessions believes in loyalty. He also believes in putting your money where your mouth is.
“The Medical College of Georgia took a chance on me, and so I have felt that it was only right for me to try to repay that by supporting them,” he says.
Dr. Sessions and his wife of 47 years, Martha, have been supporting MCG since shortly after he finished his residency. In addition to yearly donations, they recently arranged for a planned gift of $500,000 to support scholarships.
A 1955 graduate of the School of Medicine, the young man of meager means from Dawson, Ga., was eager to make a living. He entered medical school with only three years of undergraduate studies and chose his specialty based on its length of residency.
“I started off in pre-dental over at Georgia Southwestern College,” he relates in his soft-spoken Southern accent. “I was poor, had been poor all of my life. Dentistry required six years of schooling, medicine seven, so therefore I would get out and start earning a living a year quicker if I went into dentistry. It was a matter of economics. Then, during freshman year, I had to write a paper on how much it would cost to set up an office, and that opened my eyes. I said, ‘I will never be able to afford that, so I will just get a junior college diploma and become a J.C. Penney store manager.’”
The only problem was, he didn’t like working at J.C. Penney.
One fortuitous day, he bumped into a friend who told him about the affordability of MCG and his dream of a career in medicine was revived. He enrolled at the University of Georgia, where he heard about the possibility of early enrollment at MCG.
“I applied only to the Medical College of Georgia. That was the only place that I felt that I could afford, and besides, I just counted on getting in there. I got up at 4 a.m., rode the bus over to Augusta, had my interview and did the same bus ride back to Athens that same day. Lo and behold, I don’t know why, the Admissions Committee decided to take me,” says Dr. Sessions, with a sense of wonderment after all these years.
After graduation from the School of Medicine, Dr. Sessions fulfilled his two-year military service obligation at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., with the Public Health Service. Another chance conversation then led him to an anesthesiology internship at the famed Charity Hospital in New Orleans, where he met Martha. A Georgia boy through and through, he brought his bride home after they married on the last day of his residency, June 30, 1960.
“I realized that I had gotten my education at Georgia taxpayers’ expense, and I figured if I could make a living as an anesthesiologist, I really ought to come back to Georgia to practice.”
Dr. Sessions began his own practice in 1961 and set up the anesthesia department at DeKalb General Hospital (now DeKalb Medical), where he stayed until he retired in 1997 after 25 years as chief of the department. During the same time, he served as chief of anesthesia at Scottish Rite and Decatur Hospitals for 10 years, programs he also helped establish.
“I loved being in Augusta,” says Dr. Sessions. “It was a wonderful home for the four years that I was there.” And while he wasn’t able to return as often as he would have liked during the busy years of his career, he still supported MCG. “I was working hard, the hours were long and call had to be covered, but I continued to support the university financially because I felt a very strong obligation to the institution. [MCG] prepared me to earn a living, and took me in with only three years of pre-med work, saving me a year’s time and cost. I was grateful for that.
“You know,” he says, “if every [graduate] would support the medical college, they would have more money than they knew what to do with.” Dr. and Mrs. Sessions, founding members of the Milton Antony Guild, earmark their donations to scholarships; recently, their yearly donations have gone to the Class of 1955 Scholarship Fund.
Dr. Sessions’ gifts are those of appreciation, yes, but they also represent the promise of possibilities for other young people who will one day walk MCG’s campus. Sharron Walls
-- Sharon Walls