‘Nobody Even Knows My Name:’ John Tarpley considers his career, and life

Levi Watkins Jr., MD, the first Black student to be admitted to and graduate from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, was also the first surgeon to implant an automatic defibrillator in a patient.

Yet for Watkins, who died in 2015, doing for others was more important than any career achievement, his longtime friend John Tarpley, MD, noted Oct. 5 during the 25th annual Levi Watkins Jr., MD Lecture in Light Hall.

Tarpley and Watkins met in medical school. In July 1970, as they began their residency training in surgery together at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Watkins urged his friend to “know everybody’s name” — from the orderlies and nurses to the staff who prepared the meals and swept the floors.

Watkins’ advice echoed a 1961 book of essays by the writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin. Likewise, Tarpley entitled his lecture “Nobody Even Knows My Name” to reflect what he has learned during his journey in surgery, and in life.

Watkins was a passionate mentor and advocate for numerous medical students, postgraduate trainees and faculty members. So is Tarpley, who retired from the VUSM faculty in 2016 after serving for about 20 years as Program Director for General Surgery.

Prior to Tarpley’s talk, several mentorship awards hosted by the Deans’ Lecture Series Student Committee and the VUSM Office of Medical Student Affairs were presented to individuals whose commitment to service honors Watkins’ values and his mission of improving health care for everyone.

The 2026 Levi Watkins Jr., MD Awards and recipients are:

Faculty Awards: Ryan Belcher, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, and Pablo Juárez, MEd, Senior Associate in Pediatrics and Co-Director of the Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders (TRIAD).

House Staff Award: Sami Jelousi, MD, third-year resident physician in dermatology.

Medical Student Award: Kyle Enriquez, PhD, MSc, fourth-year medical student in the Medical Scientist Training Program.

Professional Degree Program Award: Katia Jarufe Siman, MEd, Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology degree candidate.

Half of Tarpley’s lecture was devoted to “lessons learned by a PGY57,” a physician in the 57th year of his postgraduate education. “Most of what I know of any importance,” he added, “I learned in Nigeria,” where he spent 12 of the first 15 years after completing his surgery residency.

All told, Tarpley has spent about 20 years teaching and helping to establish surgery training programs in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa — to date. He and his wife, Maggie, continue to travel to Africa at least a half dozen times a year.

Among the many nuggets of wisdom Tarpley included in his lecture was one from Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first Black president: “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.”

And this from the American writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”