Profiles

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Stewart

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Mervin Stewart (MED '53)

Mervin Stewart has been recording University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine history for the past 55 years. His love of photography has benefited not only himself—he earned date money in high school and paid his way through college taking and selling photographs—but also the School of Medicine, which has been using Mervin's photos in invitations and brochures, and for archival purposes, for years.

His photos are often featured in Pitt Med magazine, and his black-and-white shot of a couple dancing '50s-style became the front cover of last year's reunion invitation. Among the School of Medicine staff and his classmates, he's known as much for his photography talents as his psychiatric skills. The only subject he's more likely to be conversing about than cameras is his training as a Pitt Med student and his close involvement with the school he's so proud of.

Mervin, a Pittsburgh native, attended the University of Pittsburgh and School of Medicine with many of the boys he had known since childhood. Because of that, and the close quarters that medical students kept in the days following World War II, he has always felt particularly close to his classmates.

"The student body was smaller then, and the facilities were limited compared to today," he said. "Our class spent a lot of time together. The first and second years, we were in lockstep. Maybe that's why we're so friendly with one another."

The friendliness can also be attributed to the great reunions that Mervin helps organize every five years. More than 70 people attended the 50th reunion in May 2003. Mervin has perfected a "system," including weekly e-mail updates to classmates, that has proven successful for the 40th, 45th, and 50th reunions.

He somehow finds time to plan reunions between working at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, where he has spent his career as a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, and teaching Pitt psychiatric residents. But to him, reunion planning is nothing more than a way of giving back to the School of Medicine and getting together with some of his closest friends.