Alumni group honors classmate and friend with memorial scholarship
By Kaitlin Thorne | Editor
Steven Takacs, D.O. ('86) and his wife of 33 years, Maria Takacs, A.P.R.N., C.N.S.
Alumni group honors classmate and friend with memorial scholarship
By Kaitlin Thorne | Editor
Steven Takacs, D.O. ('86) and his wife of 33 years, Maria Takacs, A.P.R.N., C.N.S.
To honor the life of a departed friend, a group of alumni of the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine created a scholarship endowment for future students to carry on the legacy of Steven Takacs, D.O. (‘86), a celebrated rural physician who died in 2020.
Takacs died after a six-month battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects the nerve cells in the spinal cord and brain that control voluntary muscle movement and breathing. He was 60 years old.
Jeff Hutchison, D.O. (‘86), is one of the main organizers of the scholarship. He said that the group of friends met in gross anatomy lab during their first year at the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine, now known as the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine.
“We just formed a friendship, and it’s lasted for 40 years,” Hutchison said.
The group of friends consists of Scott Bleser, D.O., John Escolas, D.O., Joel Grubbs, D.O., and Doug David, D.O.. Each graduated in 1986 alongside Hutchinson and Takacs. They have remained close for nearly 40 years, supporting each other through marriages, children, careers and eventually Takacs’ diagnosis of ALS.
Takacs was first diagnosed in late 2019, and according to his wife of 33 years, Maria Takacs, he was the first one to say the diagnosis out loud.
“I think all of his peers didn’t want to tell him this is what it was,” Maria Takacs said. Maria Takacs describes her husband as a talented diagnostician, a skill he honed as a rural family practice physician in Newbury, Ohio for nearly 30 years.
“Newbury is a pretty small community, he likened it to Mayberry,” Maria Takacs said. “It really was a family practice; we’d visit homebound people. When the kids would dress up for Halloween, we’d have three or four patients that we’d have to stop to see. He loved every minute of it.”
According to Maria Takacs, her husband epitomized the family practice physician, often going well out of his way to care for his patients on a more personal level. More than once, patients who had nowhere else to go were invited to their Thanksgiving dinner, and he was known for bringing groceries on his house calls to the elderly.
Takacs’ impact on the Newbury community was profound, inspiring many to express their gratitude to Maria Takacs and their three children, Maggie, Steven and Daniel.
Steven Takacs, D.O. ('86), second from right, participating in the 2017 Convocation ceremony.
“We realized it later on in our lives and our careers that it is such a truly unique and important part of why the Heritage College has been so successful. They’ve (HCOM) always been interested in accommodating people who were non-traditional medical students, older people, people who had been in other careers, people that didn’t major in science, people that had other backgrounds…and that was Steve.”
“I think the thing that surprised me was the number of people he touched,” Maria Takacs said. “I always knew, but we can’t go anywhere without hearing a story of how he touched them or how he helped them.”
Since Takacs’ death from ALS in 2020, different memorial gestures have been made, including the Steve Takacs 5k for ALS, which takes place annually in Chesterland, Ohio, which regularly has around 200 participants.
But Takacs’ group of friends wanted to honor his life’s work as a physician and the place where that work began. Becoming a physician had been a lifelong goal for Takacs, but he found the academic side of medical school difficult. He utilized programs in place through Heritage College designed to assist students who were struggling.
“We realized later in our lives and our careers that it is such a truly unique and important part of why the Heritage College has been so successful. They’ve (HCOM) always been interested in accommodating people who were non-traditional medical students…and that was Steve,” Hutchison said. “We realized as his career unfolded that he did become one of the best primary care physicians, we believe, to ever graduate from OUCOM (HCOM).”
Though he may have struggled through medical school, Takacs remembered this time in his life fondly and was a proud alumnus, even sporting an Ohio University license plate on his car.
“We recognized how much OU meant to Steve,” Hutchison said. “It was the means by which he was afforded to do what he wanted to do since he was a little kid. I think establishing a scholarship and giving money is a reflection of what he would have done.”
During his career, Takacs was also a U.S. Army Reserves captain and a VA Medical Center physician. He also held clinical faculty positions with the Heritage College, Kent State Nurse Practitioner Program and Ursuline College Nurse Practitioner Program.
Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine
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