Lifelong Teacher

Lower your hands. You can’t cheat physics. You can remove more than one molecule of lens at a time. A surgery should be elegant and appear effortless.

—ALAN S. CRANDALL, MD, TRADEMARK PHRASES TO RESIDENTS IN TRAINING

An exacting teacher and mentor, Crandall aimed to produce the finest surgeons possible. He took special pride in seeing his students excel and become leaders in the field.

“To watch his quiet hands performing surgeries was to see a master at work. If I see a surgical video anywhere in the world, I can tell if it’s someone who trained with Alan because of a few subtle things he taught,” said Jeff Pettey, MD, MBA, Moran’s vice chair of education.

John Berdahl, MD, of Vance Thompson Vision in Sioux Falls, North Dakota, and a Moran adjunct volunteer ophthalmologist, first learned of Crandall during residency at Duke University. He had heard of Crandall’s legendary skills—and that he had a reputation of sometimes intimidating his residents and fellows.

“But I know he also made his Utah residents bulletproof,” he said. “Instead of feeling intimidated when I met him, I found he had a unique ability to inspire from afar and pull out the absolute best from those he was close to. His residents, including my colleague, Russell Swan, MD, a former Moran resident and current Moran adjunct volunteer, knew his admonitions came from a place of love and enabled them to hone skills they would carry with them for a lifetime.”

Colleagues worldwide praised Crandall’s way of clearly explaining complex surgical topics in ways that even non-surgical ophthalmologists could understand. Whenever physicians, technicians, or staff around him had questions or needed assistance, he stepped up to help.

“He understood that giving someone the confidence to handle challenging cases was just as important as training their hands to produce the proper movements,” said Roger Furlong, MD, Moran adjunct volunteer ophthalmologist and glaucoma specialist in Butte, Montana. “He understood that being a good physician meant more than knowledge or technical skill.”

Said Moran colleague Nick Mamalis, MD, who traveled the world with Crandall: “What I think is important about Alan is that he has not only done a tremendous amount of work internationally performing cataract surgeries, but also was involved in teaching others in the developing world and creating mechanisms to show other surgeons how to do these procedures and perform them elsewhere.

“It is one thing to fly in and fly out of remote locations, but it is another to set up the mechanisms to educate medical teams. It’s like the adage: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

He was my one and only mentor. I am who I am because of him, and any success I have is from his inspiration and guidance. It was a privilege to study under him as his fellow and continue to work together in surgery, clinic, research, conferences, and around the world.

— Iqbal “Ike” Ahmed, MD, FRCSC, Kensington Eye Institute, University of Toronto, and former Moran fellow

Many of the most skilled anterior segment surgeons we know today owe their expertise to Alan’s efforts.

—Robert Cionni, MD, Eye Institute of Utah

He was my teacher of towering proportions who inspired me and gave me courage and cautious confidence in approaching surgical glaucoma.

—Abba Hydara, former ophthalmic trainee now a glaucoma specialist and health care leader in Gambia