stinguished Alumni Award.Dr. John Best sought higher education a little later in life than the traditional
college student. His efforts were recognized by the Clarion University Alumni Association
with the Venango Campus Distinguished Alumni Award.
Best, a 1990 Clarion University graduate, received his M.D. degree from the Temple University School of Medicine in 1994. The Cranberry resident has lived most of his life in the Franklin and Oil City area. Graduating from Cranberry High School in 1973, he attended drafting school in Pittsburgh and worked at Joy Manufacturing in Franklin for 13 1/2 years.
"I was laid off twice," recalls Best. "The Venango Campus was a good location for me to go to class, so I started to take courses in the evening to see if there is something I could fall back upon or perhaps switch to in the future. I took a wide variety of courses, but found out that I was interested in science.
"Dr. James Cole and Dr. William Belzer each talked to me and told me that I had reached the point that I would have to go to Clarion campus to get any additional classes. When I was laid off for the second time, I started full-time at Clarion and, with the help of the pre-professional committee, graduated and got accepted at Temple. I really liked my classes at Clarion and I was prepared to do well on the medical college admissions test."
There were 4,000 applicants for the Temple University School of Medicine that year and Best was among 178 selected for entrance. "I was exempted from the genetics course thanks to what I learned in Dr. William Barnes' class," says Best. "The rest was more intensive than any college classroom I had ever been in. Sometimes we were all overwhelmed, but I feel I was well prepared for the basics by Clarion."
Following graduation from Temple, Best completed six months of his residency in family practice at the St. Vincent Health Center in Erie before requiring orthopedic surgery. With the surgery, Best, who is a hemophiliac, became the first in the country to use a recently approved clotting drug, which allowed the operation to take place. "I was involved with the drug study on hemophilia conducted in Pittsburgh and got to be the first to use it after it was approved," he says.