April 25, 2022 — The first in his family to graduate from college, Robert Davis Jackson, M.D., was committed to his pediatric cardiology patients and their families, remembers his son, Christopher Davis Jackson.

“My father was so committed to his field, his art, and existentially committed to the Hippocratic Oath such that we would be playing baseball when suddenly his beeper would go off and I’d find myself there with him spending the remainder of the afternoon in the hospital observing his craft,” Jackson said. “Dad had an excellent bedside manner, and it blew me away how calming he was not just for the kids but also their families, particularly given the overwhelming stress they were experiencing.”

His father, who grew up in Jacksonville and attended the University of Pennsylvania for medical school, served as a major in the U.S. Army Medical Corps before returning to his home state to complete his residency at the University of Florida College of Medicine.

“There was something innate about that state for him,” Jackson said. “Florida seemed to be his home, his place of center, jogging the beaches and riding waves, until another place would call for him to practice and assist medically, in which case he would respond.”

As a devoted and accomplished pediatric cardiologist, his father practiced and taught in a variety of clinics, hospitals and universities throughout the world, including the Sanger Clinic in North Carolina, Schumpert Medical Center in Louisiana, the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, King Saud University in Saudi Arabia and the Louisiana State University Health Science School of Medicine.

Jackson chose to honor the memory of his father, who passed away in 2016 at age 75, with the creation of the Robert Davis Jackson and Christopher Davis Jackson Memorial Professorship for Pediatric Cardiology at the UF College of Medicine. The generous estate gift will fund a faculty position in the pediatric cardiology division, which has consistently ranked among the top programs in the nation for the past 11 years.

Mark S. Bleiweis, M.D., the William G. Lassiter Jr. and Aneice R. Lassiter Professor and director of the UF Health Congenital Heart Center, said the center is extremely grateful to Jackson for choosing to honor his father with the gift.

“This professorship will allow us to recruit and retain a talented faculty member within the division of pediatric cardiology,” Bleiweis said. “It’s gifts like this that allow us to conduct groundbreaking research and provide expert-level care here at UF Health.”

Jackson said it was an easy decision for him to make this gift.

“It’s the efforts and commitments of people such as my father and his mentors, as well as Dr. Bleiweis and his collective faculty, who do the heavy lifting to make the world a better place that makes me proud to have my family’s name associated with them for this generation and the next,” he said.

One of Robert Jackson’s mentors while he trained at UF was Gerold Schiebler, M.D., a professor emeritus and a Distinguished Service professor of the UF College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics. Schiebler said Robert Jackson kept in touch with him long after he left Gainesville and remembered him as a physician who always worked hard to provide the best possible care to his patients.

“I hope the establishment of this professorship in Dr. Jackson’s name will help bring a nationally recognized pediatric cardiologist to UF who can elevate the opportunities available in the program,” Schiebler said.

Though Jackson works in finance rather than health care, he said his father’s philosophy and values are always present in his work.

“My dad cared about kids and their hearts, both physically and emotionally, medicine in general, and doing the right thing by them — they’re patients, not clients, as he would tell me,” Jackson said. “He was truly dedicated to the oath he took, and this is the best way I could pay tribute to those causes.”