Ordinarily, I look forward to our visits to Philadelphia to be with friends and family. This is not one of those times. Late last week, Robert L. Comis died suddenly at his home in the Philadelphia suburbs. He was only 71 years old. Bob was the head of the ECOG-ACRIN national clinical trials cooperative group, and had just announced he would be stepping down from that position, though he was anything but retired. Under his inspired leadership, Bob had stewarded ECOG into the modern age and fashioned a true cancer center without walls, leading many transformative clinical trials that have contributed to improved lives for millions of Americans afflicted by cancer. A medical oncologist and lung cancer expert by training, he was a simply spectacular physician, clinical trialist, educator and leader. He inspired generations of clinical investigators and made the world a better place.
He was my friend, my mentor and my North Star. I first met Bob when he interviewed a very insecure and nervous senior fellow (me) looking for a job. He was in Boston and I was supposed to take him to Quincy Market to eat at an Italian restaurant. I got lost driving him to the restaurant (no Waze back then!) and was sure I’d lost my opportunity. He was very quiet – which, as I later learned, was a behavior reserved for when he measured the substance of an argument or a person. But, somehow I landed the job.
Once we started at Fox Chase, he took me under his wing. I received my first administrative duties (developing and overseeing the fellowship program, designing the outpatient clinic organization) and clinical research opportunities (getting me engaged in a crazy new class of drugs called monoclonal antibodies), and he always gave me the room I needed to fail, pick myself up and figure out how to succeed. After a couple of years, I had the crazy idea that I might be able to run a laboratory – even though I had relatively little relevant experience and training – and he gave me a small space and a tech, and let me run with the ball. He didn’t know a T-cell from a golf tee, but he was a wonderful and engaged reviewer of my earliest grant applications and papers. He made my career possible.
I was not the only person to benefit from his immense generosity of spirit and deep sense of humanity, which he demonstrated at the funeral of a former faculty member at Fox Chase. After struggling with a very difficult family situation, this faculty member – a beloved and gentle, kind man – snapped under the pressure, murdered his family and committed suicide. The shock was unimaginable – it was the kind of jolt that can fracture the spirit of almost any enterprise. At the memorial service a few days later, Bob delivered a towering eulogy where he channeled our pain and turned to the schoolmates of one of the victims and comforted them quite directly to assure them that they were safe, their parents loved them and this would not happen to them. He healed us. It was then that we all knew we were in the presence of a great man.
After he left Fox Chase, he tried to recruit me to his new institution, and I almost joined him, but was offered the job as chair of the department of medical oncology at Fox Chase and chose to stay there. The first call I received – I will never forget this – was from him. Without saying, “Hello, this is Bob”, I heard (and remember his gravelly, energetic and commanding voice as if it was yesterday) him bellow, “Mazel tov!” He was happier for me than he was disappointed by the failed recruitment. What a guy.
Over the years that followed, our paths connected less frequently, but always with great warmth and a sense that we were members of the same “family.” So, when I attend his funeral on Monday it will be with a keen sense of appreciation for the man he was, the impact he made on my life and on so many others, and with fond memories of an earthy, brilliant, inspiring mentor. If there is any afterlife with a sense of justice, it has a space reserved for him, replete with a baby grand piano, a well stocked bar, lots of friends and plenty of work to do. For if there is one thing Bob Comis certainly does not want to do, it is to rest.
Have a good week.