Giving back

Glenn and Barbara Merz have shared many triumphs and tears at Vanderbilt. The couple met at Vanderbilt as their late spouses were battling lung diseases after receiving transplants. Barbara helped establish a family/spouse support group where she and Glenn became close friends throughout the recovery process.

Barbara’s first husband, Vernon Rosser, was diagnosed in 1997 with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF), a lung disorder with no known cause and no cure, and was placed on a national waiting list for a transplant, along with 3,000 other hopeful patients.

In June 1997, a lung became available for Vernon. The complicated surgery at Vanderbilt was a success, even though Vernon faced many challenges during the long recovery and spent nine weeks in intensive care. Vernon recovered and he and Barbara enjoyed five years before he died in December 2002.

Glenn’s first wife, Joyce, also suffered from IPF and received a transplant in 1998. According to the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation, there are 5 million people worldwide who are affected by this disease. In the United States there are more than 200,000 patients with Pulmonary Fibrosis, with about 50,000 new cases diagnosed each year. As a consequence of misdiagnosis the actual numbers may be significantly higher.

Vernon and Joyce became very close friends during the transplant. Joyce died in February 2003, only nine weeks after Vernon.

“Joyce had been very ill prior to this and I think once Vernon was gone, though his passing was totally unexpected, she was ready also,” Barbara said. “We both said they had something to do with us getting together.”

Glenn and Barbara maintained their friendship after the deaths of their spouses, and eventually began dating. They married in January 2004.

As a way of giving back to the institution that means so much to them, that helped care for their spouses and brought them together, they have established the Glenn and Barbara R. Merz Scholarship for Medical Education and the Barbara and Vernon Rosser Endowed Fund in Lung Transplant Medicine.

The Merz Scholarship for Medical Education will fully endow a medical school scholarship fund, and the Rosser Endowed Fund will endow an unrestricted fund in the Department of Medicine supporting transplant medicine.

“Vanderbilt has impacted my life several times,” Barbara said. “I was born there and developed a very serious disease myself. They used an experimental drug that helped save my life. It is known as penicillin.”

Barbara recalls the care and compassion she and her husband received while being treated at Vanderbilt. “When Vernon was a transplant patient he did not do well the first few days and was put into a drug-induced coma,” she added. “During those long nine weeks, doctors, nurses and even people I did not know came by his room in ICU to encourage and talk to me. I was not a spouse but a member of the Vanderbilt family.”
- JON COOMER