Don Vine, M.D., spent three decades as a Wichita cardiologist and nearly a quarter century teaching students and internal medicine residents at KU School of Medicine-Wichita about his field.

After his death at 83 last April, it seemed fitting, family members say, to honor his medical and educational careers by endowing a fund at the school to help encourage and support students and residents interested in cardiology. Memorial donations, added to funds provided by his wife, Nancy Vine, were enough to endow the Donald L. Vine, M.D., Cardiology Education Support Fund.

“He gave such a part of his life to the students at the school,” says Nancy. “He really believed in cardiology from a patient standpoint. It seemed right to establish an endowment that would encourage students interested in cardiology to pursue further education in this field.”

“To me,” says son, Chris Vine, “having met so many of the people he had influenced and seeing the impact he had on their lives, the fund is a small way to perpetuate the legacy that he began as an educator at the school.”

The fund is flexible, allowing the internal medicine department to support a range of cardiology education needs.

“In particular, we have growing needs to support educational training in point-of-care-ultrasound (POCUS),” says William Salyers, M.D., chair of the department and director of the internal medicine residency program.

A doctor finds a home in Kansas

Raised in California, Vine graduated from Stanford University and its medical school. He did his internship and junior residency at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. While in Alabama, he met Nancy, a hospital medical technologist and they married in 1967.

“We met through a mutual friend,” says Nancy, who now lives in Boise, Idaho. “Rather quickly, we formed a deep bond of love and commitment.”

During their 55 years together, the Vines would make multiple stops as he learned his specialty, served in the Air Force and moved between private practice and teaching.

After Birmingham, they moved to Boston for his senior residency. The couple then went to Ohio’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where he served from 1970 to 1972. Next was Seattle, where Vine finished his cardiology fellowship. He became an attending physician and assistant professor at University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington in 1974, remaining there until entering private practice with the Wichita Clinic in 1979.

“He connected with the doctors at the clinic in Wichita, and the city offers a lot in the way of culture – the universities and the symphony and music theater are really top notch,” Nancy says.

“He used to joke it was equally far from everything and equally close to nothing,” Chris says of his father, whose survivors include daughter, Amanda Wiley of Boise, Idaho, and two grandchildren.

A specialist in interventions

Vine specialized in interventional cardiology, performing heart catheterizations and other procedures. Later in the 1980s, he returned to academic medicine, joining KU School of Medicine-Wichita to train medical students and residents while continuing to see patients.

“He was an excellent teacher, and enjoyed that,” Nancy says. “From the time I knew him, the only thing he wanted to do was cardiology. Problems were eliminated through heart catheterizations without undergoing bypass surgery. I think that's why he liked cardiology so much.”

“He worked hard, doing an awful lot of heart caths,” says Chris, a Phoenix resident. “He always tried to be home for dinner and would then frequently head back out to attend to patients when needed. Mom and he would take two cars wherever we went, because he'd invariably get paged and need to attend to someone.”

Chris shared a letter where his father explained his career choice: “First, the moral and ethical codes that I have grown to believe in and am now trying to live by can be best realized in the field of medicine. Secondly, I am very sensitive to the needs and desires of other people. I receive intense satisfaction from having the skill to help another. … My biggest disappointments come when I lack this skill but can still see the need.”

Always a camera at ready

When not tending patients or future doctors, Vine and his wife liked to travel, visiting many national parks across the country and Italy, South Africa, and other spots. The doctor, like he had since youth, always had a camera along.

During a college semester in Strasburg, he took “tons of slides” of Germany. In Wichita, he gravitated to landscapes and “I spent a lot of time waiting in the car for him to take pictures,” his wife recalls.

“Once digital came around, you could take 500 pictures of one thing,” she observes, and her husband took plenty.

Vine retired in 2009 and the Vines traveled far and wide to see the country, their children and take photos. When they began to travel less, Vine shot photos closer to home, of buildings and plants at Botanica and the zoo. His works hang on the walls at the medical school, local hospitals and offices. He embraced editing technology and used it to transform images – “cheating,” Nancy playfully taunted – and gave some to friends and offered others on a web gallery.

“He sold quite a few of his landscapes because people seemed to appreciate them,” she says.

A fund to continue his life’s work: cardiology

After Vine’s passing in 2023, his family directed memorials to the medical school. Those donations were considerable enough to endow the fund, allowing for annual dispersals.

The doctor is remembered well by those he taught and influenced.

“My experiences with Dr. Vine as an intern pushed me to take ownership of my patients from not only the standpoint of understanding my patients’ disease processes but also in becoming confident to make difficult management decisions by using scientific literature to support my decisions,” Salyers says. “Those early experiences helped mold who I ultimately became as a practicing physician.”

Another former internal medicine resident practicing in Wichita, cardiologist Wassim Shaheen, M.D., spoke at his memorial service.

“Dr. Vine exemplified a true educator. He was not a doctor that babied the students and residents but rather a genuine human being that gave you a purpose in the medical field,” Shaheen, a volunteer clinical associate professor, shared recently. “He was a role model to residents and provided guidance to his students. He had an exquisite mind and, most importantly, was an understanding person. These traits impacted us all during our residency at KU.”

“What truly impacted me most was his sense of ‘joyful commitment’ to his patients in a very intense, stressful and challenging environment,” says Shaheen, who serves as education coordinator for internal medicine, cardiovascular disease, interventional cardiology and subspecialties. “He shaped future generations of physicians to respect the core values we hold dearly, namely caring for others.”

Above, left: Don Vine, M.D., as a major in the Air Force (Courtesy photo)

Supporting the Vine Fund

If you would like to make a gift to the Donald L. Vine, M.D., Cardiology Education Support Fund at KU School of Medicine-Wichita, contact Brad Rukes, KU Endowment development director for the Wichita campus, at 316-293-2641 or BRukes@kuendowment.org.