Brothers and Vanderbilt University alumni Richard Gill, BA’62, and Gordon Gill, BA’60, MD’63, wanted to find a meaningful way to honor their father, renowned physician and public health leader Daniel Gordon (D.G.) Gill, MD, following his death in 1962. They decided to endow a scholarship in his name at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
“We wanted to do something long-lasting that would make a serious change in people’s lives,” Richard said of the resulting D.G. Gill Scholarship Fund, which includes a preference for students interested in public health and providing care to underserved areas — much like D.G. Gill did throughout his career.
Born in the small town of Victoria Harbor, Canada, D.G. Gill came to the United States in the 1920s on a Rockefeller Foundation grant to help eradicate malaria and other diseases.
After becoming a U.S. citizen and serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he went on to become head of the Alabama Department of Public Health, among several other influential roles.
“With his two degrees (MD, DPH/DrPH), he always had the choice of practicing medicine as a physician or going the public health route,” Richard said. “The latter enabled him to do more good and reach more people.”
Richard specifically recalls the summer of 1953, when the polio epidemic swept through the family’s town of Montgomery, Alabama, which had the highest per-capita rate of infections in the nation.
In response, his father — who was the American representative to the World Health Organization at the time — directed what is often regarded as the first mass inoculation in history, impacting more than 30,000 children and ultimately breaking the cycle of the disease in the area.
Today, the D.G. Gill Scholarship also honors the legacy of Richard’s older brother Gordon, who passed away in 2021, nearly 40 years after helping to first establish the fund. A highly regarded endocrinologist and former Dean of the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, Gordon was a rarefied academician who, in addition to writing more than 200 medical research papers, was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
“I always looked up to Gordon and admired his love of learning,” said Richard, who studied English, history and philosophy as an undergraduate. “I went to Vanderbilt because Gordon was already there, so I was familiar with it and knew it would be great.”
Richard, a distinguished attorney who served as senior associate counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives during the impeachment of President Richard Nixon, continues to give to the fund today. He documented a significant bequest in 2024 and plans to increase his giving in years to come.
“Throughout my own studies and career, I was always aware of what a scholarship of any size could mean,” Richard says. “My hope is that this fund will make a serious change in a medical student’s life and inspire others to give as well.”