UW Dean, Wife Mourned

Some came to remember Philip Fialkow’s discoveries on the genetic characteristics of cancer, others his winning classroom style.

Still, for the 1,200 friends, relatives, acquaintances and students who filled Meany Hall at the University of Washington for a memorial service Sunday, there was more than that behind the medical school dean’s sheepish smile and the wide smile of his wife, Helen.

To former university president William P. Gerberding, who persuaded the reluctant Fialkow to become dean in 1990 and vice president of medical affairs two years later, he was a warmhearted, downto-earth man who “had an elegant shrug.”

Flags outside were lowered to half-staff and ushers inside wore black ribbons and distributed programs showing the smiling couple in front of a mountain in Tibet last year.

Their bodies were found Nov. 3 after a snowstorm in which they died while hiking on their fourth trip to Nepal.

Fialkow, 62, came to the university on a residency in 1962, joined the faculty in 1965, became a full professor before he was 40 and wrote more than 200 scientific articles.

Helen Fialkow, 61, was remembered as a woman who loved her family, World War I books, poetry, cooking and fine wine, and who helped convince her husband to become dean after he had turned down the job once.