Thank you to Blyth Thompson (1946S) for sending us his recent article for the George Herald about his life-long friend, Dr Robert Frater (1946O) who was recently awarded the Bishop Gray Medal. 

OUTSTANDING AWARD FOR GEORGE HOSPITAL TRUSTEE

 
Blyth writes: The famous Cape School Bishops, has inaugurated a new award, the Bishop Gray medal, named after one of the founders of a hundred and seventy years ago. The award goes to an old boy of the school for outstanding achievement in the interests of the community. Professor Robert William Mayo Frater, inter alia a trustee of the George Hospital Trust, was one of the first to receive this magnificent honour in the spacious Bishops chapel that is the central focus of the senior school,  on Friday, 1^st March 2019 alongside Raymond Ackerman (1948S).

Simon Peile (Chairman of Council), Raymond Ackerman (Bishop Gray Medal Recipient), Dr Robert Frater (Bishop Gray Medal Recipient), Adam Pike (OD Union Chairman) and Guy Pearson (Principal)

After an exceptional school career, starting at the Bishops Preparatory School in 1937, Professor Frater, the head prefect of Ogilvie House who had been captain of tennis and a member of the First Rugby XV matriculated in the First class in 1946 winning the West Jones Scholarship to study medicine at the University of Cape Town, where he qualified with a First Class in Surgery.

In 1955 he was admitted to the Royal College of Surgeons in the United Kingdom and subsequently took up a Fellowship in Surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester where he decided to specialise in the then new field of cardio thoracic surgery. He continued his research specialising in the repair of diseased mitral vales, using autologous pericardial patches and was the first to install a prosthesis for a defective aortic valve into a human being using a pigs valve.

In 1964 he took charge of the new Open Heart Operations Department at the prestigious Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, which he built from scratch to the point where graduates from their clinical training programmes and research fellowships became chiefs of surgery at their respective hospitals around the world.

Over a 50 year period Professor Frater pioneered various life saving techniques for which he was declared the outstanding alumnus of the Mayo Clinic, the highest honour attainable in the medical profession in the United States of America. In fact his parents were both doctors at Mayo where they met.

Professor Frater with his exceptionally artistic wife, Elaine has always loved South Africa where they keep a holiday home in the Southern Cape.  After retirement he formed the company Glycar based in Irene, which produces bovine heart patches used to repair diseased heart valves in humans.

He has also formed an association with the University of The Free State, where he is involved with a wide variety of projects and has been recognised with an honorary PhD crowned now at the age of 90 by his old school Bishops that he loves with the Bishop Gray Medal.

In a previous article in the George Herald:
 

Prof. Robert Frater (left) and Blyth Thompson, two old school pals from Bishops College who are now making a huge contribution to the George community.

Friends meet again 
Thompson, a retired businessman who studied at Rhodes and later read law at Oxford, says he was utterly surprised to discover four years ago that his old school friend had a holiday home in Glentana. He was making enquiries at Bishops College at the time to trace his pal after doctors had given him only days to live because of a diseased aortic valve.
 
"Knowing about Robert's achievements and research with heart valves, I got hold of his number which was, to my surprise, a local number." He set up a meeting with Frater at his home in Glentana to share his predicament with his friend.
 
"I knew that Robert had done some research on using pigs' valves in human hearts and I wanted to know if he had a pig my size," chuckles Thompson. But Frater informed him of major advancements in the field and that he has a factory in Irene where mechanical aortic valves from ox heart skin are being manufactured, one of which saved Thompson's life. He is here today to tell the story at 87 years of age.
 
"I go around telling everybody that I'm as strong as an ox," he laughs. After his heart surgery, Thompson helped in establishing the Garden Route Cardiac Support Group and Frater has agreed to be the patron. It was after George Hospital CEO Michael Vonk served as a committee member of the group that Thompson was invited to serve on the hospital board. When the urgent need for a new paediatric unit emerged, Thompson agreed to handle the fundraising, establishing Waterdale company as the official fundraising entity. Waterdale happened to be the name of his father's farm in the Transkei, now expropriated and occupied by the Xhosa royal family.
 
'Good people trying to do good things' 
When approached for comment, Frater said, "There are a lot of good people trying to do a lot of good things at the George Hospital."
 
"My notion was that everybody should have the same level of healthcare and the only place one can try and achieve that is the state-run hospitals. They can either be run extremely badly or very well, and I get the impression that at the George Hospital they are trying to run their system very well. The predominant population they serve would have difficulties with the premiums they would have to pay for private healthcare, and they are the ones who truly need help. It is therefore extremely important for the hospital's resources to be supported as well as possible."

Go to original article HERE