College of Medicine

June 24, 2015

Durell Peaden, who was the right man in exactly the right place when Florida State needed a legislative boost for its proposed medical school, died early today.

He had been hospitalized in Pittsburgh, recovering from a heart attack several weeks ago. He would have turned 70 in August.

“This is a sad day for the College of Medicine,” said Dean John P. Fogarty.

As a physician from rural Crestview, as a state House member and as a state senator, Peaden had always looked out for the people of the Florida Panhandle. He was among the first to point out the shortage of primary care physicians in that part of the state. And in 2000, Peaden was standing right next to Gov. Jeb Bush when the bill creating the Florida State University College of Medicine was signed.

“Sen. Peaden was a great friend of the college and one of our biggest supporters and friends,” Fogarty said. “He was there at the beginning, advocating for a medical school for the Panhandle. He helped write the original language establishing our school and has been with us ever since, watching with great pride our history and accomplishments.”

Senior Associate Dean Myra Hurt, then director of Florida State’s Program in Medical Sciences, recalled her first meeting with Peaden. It was the first week of January 1998. Six or eight legislative, medical and FSU officials were in the PIMS office. Hurt was at one end of a long table, and Peaden was at the other. FSU President Sandy D’Alemberte — who had heard Hurt’s plan for a community-based medical school that would be student-focused and patient-centered, emphasizing primary care and serving the underserved — asked her to tell the others.

“Durell started smiling,” she recalled. “And I knew right then that we were on the same wavelength. From then on until we got accreditation, Durell was always there. He became like my brother.”

At the time, the conventional wisdom was that the state, and the United States, had a surplus of physicians and that no new medical schools were needed. Today, numerous new medical schools have been created to try to address the physician shortage.

Here in Florida, thanks to the efforts of Peaden and others, nearly 300 students from 38 Panhandle communities have attended, or are attending, the FSU College of Medicine. Dozens of alumni are practicing medicine in the Panhandle — including one in Peaden’s hometown.

Over the years, Peaden paid close attention to the med school.

“He’d call me, without fail, every Friday, and would ask me what was going on,” Hurt said.

When he visited, it wasn’t unusual for him to look around the medical buildings and say to her, “Can you believe this?”

“It is hard to believe that all this happened,” Hurt said, citing the considerable efforts of Peaden, D’Alemberte, House Speaker (now FSU President) John Thrasher and others. “I always say: We were on a mission from God, and that’s why everything just came together so beautifully. It was hard, yes. There was a lot of opposition, yes. But everything fell into place. Durell was very proud.”

Peaden graduated from Tulane University in 1968. He earned an M.D. from Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1973 and a J.D. from Faulkner University Jones School of Law in 1987. He served in the Florida House from 1994 to 2000 and the Senate from 2000 to 2010. He started as a Democrat and switched to the Republican Party in 1997.

In a story for the News Service of Florida, Jim Saunders wrote: "With his soft, slow drawl, Peaden liked to describe himself as a 'country doctor.' He was a well-liked figure in the Legislature," where he was widely known as Doc.

Peaden could be tough, Hurt said, but she never saw that side of him.

“All I saw was — he absolutely loved living. He loved what he was doing. He was always so full of enthusiasm. I had thought maybe he could lick this heart attack because he had such a life force. I never saw him down, not one time. He was always up to something, always had some project, some plan. He was something else.”

He is survived by his wife, Nancy, and three children. Funeral arrangements are pending.