I’d rather cry than forget.
- RJP
John P. Pryor, MD, '88
Dr. John P. Pryor, who was felled by enemy fire on December 25, 2008 while serving his second tour as an Army combat surgeon in Iraq, graduated from Binghamton University's Harpur College of Arts and Sciences in 1988 with a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry. After enrolling at St. George's Medical College in Grenada, Pryor transferred to the State University of New York at Buffalo's School of Medicine, where he received his medical degree and completed a residency in general surgery. After completing a fellowship in trauma surgery and critical care at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, he joined the Department of Surgery faculty there and served as the trauma program director for the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where approximately 3,000 traumatically injured patients are treated each year.
Pursuit of a medical career started early for Pryor, who joined an ambulance corps at 17 and became a certified emergency medical technician at 18. As a Binghamton University student, he served as an EMT for Harpur's Ferry Student Volunteer Ambulance Service, Inc. His desire to help never waned. On 9/11, after watching the first tower fall on a TV at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, he packed a bag of surgical supplies, drove to New York, talked his way through locked-down tunnels into Manhattan and made it all the way to Ground Zero. To his chagrin, he found no one to help, only dust and darkness and a silence so deafening "you could actually hear your ears ring."
At age 38, Pryor joined the U.S. Army Reserves after learning that soldiers in Iraq were dying because of a lack of qualified trauma surgeons. He used what he'd learned caring for young men blasted full of holes in Philadelphia's street wars to save American soldiers. It was those soldiers _ the relentless loss of their lives -that sent him on a new mission in Philadelphia when he saw with rare clarity that the war on that city's streets, the one that kept his hospital's tra~ma unit frantically tying off veins ,and arteries, rebooting hearts and pouring in new blood, was just as relentless. But it could be stopped. All that he saw on 9/11 and the days that followed, what he observed in West Philadelphia and Iraq, led him to write essays that ran in the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Washington Post. In one August 2007 Washington Post essay, Pryor wrote:
"In Iraq, soldiers die for freedom, for honor, for their country and for their buddies. Here in Philadelphia, they die without honor, without purpose, for no country, for no one. More young men are killed each day on the streets of America than on the worst days of carnage and loss in Iraq. There is a war at home raging every day, filling our trauma centers with so many wounded children that it sometimes makes Baghdad seem like a quiet city in Iowa."
John P. Pryor was a doctor, surgeon and saver of lives in Philadelphia's operating rooms and in the tented, improvised, inadequate operating rooms of Mosul and Abu Ghraib. Those who knew him say that, while his cause was righteous, he never was. Pryor was "a force of nature. A great man, a great friend, a great doctor," said Todd Kesselman '88, his Binghamton University roommate.
At Pryor's core were many great values, but his passion for service to others gave back something to each and everyone of us, everyday. His favorite quote, by Albert Schweitzer, captures the essence of John Pryor:
"Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth. You must give some time to your fellow man. Even if it's a little thing, do something for those who need help, something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it. For remember, you don't lie in a world all your own. Your brothers are here, too."
University Medal
Binghamton University
The University Medal - the highest honor Binghamton University bestows - is awarded in recognition of distinguished service to the University, higher education and the larger community.
