No Bones About Why They Support UF

Dr. Dempsey and Deanna Springfield’s planned gift will boost training in the College of Medicine’s orthopedics residency program.

Dempsey and Deanna Springfield’s ties to UF and appreciation for their alma mater convinced the couple to include the orthopaedic residency program in their estate plan.

He was westside, son of a Methodist preacher, a kid growing up in the shadow of UF’s campus. She was eastside, a Jewish girl, daughter of a downtown Gainesville shop owner.

Same hometown, worlds apart.

“Students from P.K. Yonge [his school] and Gainesville High [hers] didn’t cross paths,” he explains.

Yet somehow—in one of the unlikeliest cases of fate playing its hand—Dempsey and Deanna Springfield found each other long after their last days in high school had passed and Dempsey had said goodbye to Gainesville to earn an undergraduate degree at Emory University in Atlanta.

That was more than half a century ago. Now in their retirement years, the couple are giving back to the university that brought them together with a generous gift to the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Sports Medicine.

Rewind to the Nixon era, the height of the war in Vietnam, civil unrest, the Beatles and moonshots. Dempsey was back in Gainesville for medical school. Deanna, as it so happened, was the executive assistant for the campus infirmary’s director. One day—as if the angels of chance themselves had personally arranged it—Dempsey and a classmate wandered into the infirmary for a school project. Deanna was on duty. Eyes met. Destiny patted itself on the back.

Together, side-by-side, the Springfields built a life, made a good living while making a difference in their communities, and did what they could to help others along the way.

“When I was young, my father was very connected to the university. [UF president] J. Wayne Reitz lived across the street from us,” Dempsey (MD ’71, HS ’76) says. “Coming back and being part of the university is one of the reasons we want to support it, particularly the medical school, because my education there allowed me to be professionally and economically successful.”

That doesn’t mean life didn’t throw Dr. Springfield and his wife curves. It did. Often.

Deanna, for instance, was years into the workforce when she decided to go to college. But just months into her FSU courses, her heart beckoned her back to Gainesville, to Dempsey, to the University of Florida and a bachelor’s degree in design.

“I was a late bloomer,” Deanna (BS ’74) quips.

Likewise, Dempsey’s plan to practice orthopaedics took a detour when he thought he’d give cardiac surgery a shot—only to discover orthopaedics was more to his liking. And even then, with his UF residency behind him and on the doorstep to a promising career as a surgeon, academia tugged at his dream. His mentor, UF’s famed orthopaedics expert Dr. William Enneking, convinced Dempsey to come back to the university as a medical school faculty member.

“Dr. Enneking instilled in me the importance of education, so I spent most of my career highly involved in medical education,” Dempsey says.

Which, to the Springfields’ surprise, meant leaving UF in 1987 for opportunities up North at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, then Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.

“When we got married, we thought we’d move to the [Florida] Panhandle to practice orthopaedic surgery. We’d given no thought to a career in academia,” Dempsey says. “Deanna said she didn’t want to live farther north than Atlanta.”

“I’m a compromising person,” Deanna teases. “I’m very easy to get along with.”

Despite those other cities and institutions, the University of Florida is special to the Springfields. It always has been.

Dempsey can remember going to his first Gator football game in 1952 and watching star fullback Rick Casares. He can almost hear the crowd’s roar when reminiscing about his teen years peddling soft drinks in the stadium on brilliant fall Saturdays to earn extra cash. Whiling away the hours with best friend Bob Harrell (whose dad is former College of Medicine Dean George Harrell) still brings a nostalgic tinge.

“In those days, Gainesville was the university, and that was it,” Dempsey says. “Probably 90% of the community had a direct connection to the university, and the other 10% had one degree of separation.”

It’s the friendships and friendliness and attitude at UF—that the university’s mission is to serve the greater good—that sets it apart, the Springfields insist.

“It’s not like any other college,” Deanna says. “People are just friendly and kind. I don’t recall any bad experiences.”

That made their investment in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Sports Medicine’s residency program an easy decision. Their deferred gift of life insurance will forever endow the Dr. Dempsey Springfield and Deanna Springfield Resident Education Support Fund.

“It’s increasingly difficult for residency programs and medical students to finance education, and the technical demands have gone way up,” Dempsey says. “When I was in medical school, we didn’t need very much: a cadaver, a sawbones and a textbook, and that was about it. Nowadays, with the increased sophistication to become more adept and technical, the needs of the residency program are greater.”

There’s also a personal reason for their gift.

“I went to medical school there and did residency there and Dr. Enneking opened doors for me,” Dempsey explains. “I just feel indebted to the University of Florida and the orthopaedic department, and I want to do something to pay it back.”

Adds Deanna: “Our families did instill upon us to be kind to people and to accept everyone and to help when we can.”

Dr. Parker Gibbs, UF’s orthopaedic program’s director, says the Springfields’ gift will have a direct impact on health care.

“Dempsey and Deanna’s generous investment in the orthopaedics residency program will ensure that future surgeons have the skills to improve their patients’ lives,” he contends. “Their legacy will be all the lives touched by the doctors who come through our residency program’s doors.”

Ideally, their support will inspire other alumni to contribute to the orthopaedic residency program, the Springfields say.

“Their [alumni] success is only partly related to them,” Dempsey points out. “It’s also related very much to their education and the opportunities they got because of that education. There’s this impression that if you’re not wealthy nobody cares if you make a donation. But you don’t have to make a gigantic donation—everything’s appreciated.”