Off Beat: Physician is honored by unit to be named for him

The PeaceHealth Southwest Foundation recently celebrated reaching its $10.5 million goal to fund the new Thomas & Sandra Young Neuroscience Center.

The final pieces of the funding puzzle were an anonymous $1 million gift and $600,000 from the Tod and Maxine McClaskey Foundation.

While the anonymous donor requested the name of the rehabilitation unit to honor Dr. Benjamin H. McGough, one of the founders of Rebound Orthopedics & Neurosurgery, the McClaskey Foundation chose to honor Dr. Cyril Dodge with a wing of his own. The Inpatient Rehabilitation Unit will bear Dodge’s name.

Dodge treated the McClaskeys for years.

“My grandparents, Tod and Maxine McClaskey, would have been pleased to be involved with this project,” said Jillian Hagstrom, board member of the McClaskey Foundation in a press release. “We are glad to have the opportunity to carry on their legacy of generosity and to honor Dr. Dodge.”

Dodge said the McClaskeys were more than just patients; they were longtime friends. He said their friendship spanned 15 years and he took care of them for the last 10 years of their lives. Maxine McClaskey died of ovarian cancer in 2005 and Tod McClaskey died in 2003.

Dodge retired nearly two years ago and worked at the Vancouver Clinic and at PeaceHealth.

He said the honor came as a complete surprise.

“I’m quite honored and humbled to get this honor because there are many other physicians more deserving than I,” Dodge said. “But it’s a very nice honor.”

Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.