News @ VCU School of Pharmacy

Talamini (B.S. ’61) remembered

Capt. Thomas Talamini, who earned a bachelor of science degree from the School of Pharmacy in 1961, died March 16, 2009.

Talamini, 75, was predeceased by his wife, who died in 1996, his parents and one sister. He was survived by one sister, Orsolina Alberghini of Raritan, N.J.; three nephews, William F. Hunt of Milford, Bradford Hunt of Readington and Thomas Hunt of Stewartsville, NJ.; a great-nephew and three great-nieces.

“Tom loved the medical college,” said his nephew William F. Hunt. “He often spoke of it.”

In a 1999 interview, Talamini said, “I had three strikes against me when I started out at the Medical College of Virginia. My grades in high school weren’t that good, the School of Pharmacy at Rutgers University threw me out after a year and a half, and I was a Yankee from New Jersey trying to go to a Southern, state-supported school.”

It’s not hard to see that this alum was also a bit of a character.

In the same 1999 interview, Warren Weaver, emeritus dean, said no student who had “busted out” of another pharmacy school ever had been admitted to MCV. Also, Talamini had enlisted in the Army after leaving Rutgers.

Having selected MCV from 22 pharmacy schools he researched, Talamini thought, “I don’t have a snowball’s chance. Lo and behold, I get this acceptance letter. I almost dropped my eyeteeth.”

Weaver said Talamini had told him that given the chance, he would graduate and be a credit to the school. Once he was on campus, Weaver added, Talamini did “enormously well,” referring to him as “a thoroughbred colt that just needed reining in.”

After graduation, Talamini worked as a pharmacist in Newport News and Hampton, where he met Peggy Sue Franken, the young nurse anesthetist who would become his bride. One of the couple’s unusual hobbies was collecting player pianos.

Talamini was restless, though, and considered rejoining the military. He found a job through the U.S. Public Health Service’s Indian Health Service Program (formerly part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs).

Beginning as chief pharmacist for the Claremore Indian Hospital in Claremore, Okla., he worked his way up to the rank of Navy captain and also, by his fifth year, to hospital director. (Claremore Indian Hospital, also known as Claremore Comprehensive Indian Health Care Facility, provides health services to the 90,000 American Indians in northeast Oklahoma.)

“When he first started working in Oklahoma,” his nephew recalled, “the Indians would shoot at him [because Talamini wasn’t an American Indian]. He had holes in his car!”

Things obviously worked out: Talamini remained CEO of the hospital for 24 years … and he also remained in touch with his former dean.

In 2001, Talamini received the School of Pharmacy’s Pharmacy Alumnus Service Award.

“Tom was a very smart man,” said his nephew. “He was always very kind and would never complain.” In addition to having gone to Korea and having earned a Purple Heart, Hunt said, Talamini did a great deal of government work, including after the Oklahoma City bombing. He has photos of his uncle with former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.

Recently, Talamini was moved to the Alzheimer’s Unit in the Claremore Veterans Center. He died at Muskogee Veterans Hospital.

“He went peaceably,” said Hunt.

In 1999, Talamani told an interviewer, “I still ask Dr. Weaver to this day, ’Why did you take a chance on me?’ “

Weaver’s answer? “We saw some potential.”

Submitted By:
Cynthia McMullen
4/9/2009