John Anderson, M.D. ’73, was born on November 29, 1948, in Dallas, Texas. He grew up in McKinney, Texas, graduating in 1967 from McKinney High School, where he played football, basketball and baseball and graduated at the top of his class. He developed an early interest in medicine while working as an orderly at the Wysong Clinic in McKinney. He attended Baylor University for his undergraduate degree. He also met the love of his life, Rachel Presley, in 1967, and they were married on January 24, 1970. He left college a year early to start medical school at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He received his undergraduate degree after his first year of medical school and earned his medical degree in 1973. He completed an internship and surgical residency at Baylor University Medical Center (BUMC) in Dallas, followed by a fellowship in vascular surgery at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis. Dr. Anderson returned to Dallas in 1979 to begin his practice in general and vascular surgery at BUMC. In the early 1990s, Dr. Anderson served as president of the BUMC medical staff. He was the first full-time physician executive for Baylor Health Care System and served as chief medical officer of BUMC from 1995 to 2004. He held the same position at Catholic Health Initiatives from 2004 to 2008 in Denver. He also served on a variety of hospital and health system boards and in other leadership roles, including serving on the Board of Trustees for his alma mater, Baylor College of Medicine, from 2011 until his death. In recent years, he worked with MEDI Leadership, offering executive coaching and leadership development services, and he particularly enjoyed mentoring new physician executives.
John’s professional accomplishments were only a small part of his rich and impactful life, which was founded on a deep personal faith in Jesus Christ. He followed a calling to mission work, especially medical missions, in India, Ghana, Nicaragua, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and South Texas, among many others. He delivered Meals on Wheels with Rachel. He taught Sunday school classes and served as a deacon and church leader his entire adult life, predominantly at Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas and later at First Baptist Church in Waco, where he and Rachel settled upon moving back from Colorado. As he told an interviewer in 2003, “I don’t wear my faith on my sleeve, but that’s what makes me tick.” A colleague at Baylor College of Medicine noted that John “truly went out of his way to make a difference in the world. A humanitarian’s soul.”
