This article has been updated since it first appeared in print.
Virginia state lawmaker and future governor L. Douglas Wilder (top left) represented the Tucker family in a civil suit after the death Bruce Tucker (center). (Photos courtesy Richmond Times Dispatch and by Allen Jones courtesy VCU Enterprise Marketing And Communications; photo illustration by Ryan Rich)
Bruce Tucker’s name appears on the McGlothlin Medical Education Center auditorium at Virginia Commonwealth University, but the Richmonder’s impact on medicine extends far beyond the label.
Tucker, a Black man, was 54 when he fell and fractured his skull in May 1968. On arriving at the Medical College of Virginia (which became VCU Health), doctors diagnosed him with a hematoma and brain stem contusion. They attempted treatment, but Tucker was brain dead within a day. What happened next made history but left Tucker behind.
In 1968, medical professionals at MCV were on the vanguard of heart medicine; Dr. Richard Lower, cardiac chief, was in competition with his contemporaries to perform the first human heart transplant at the institution. Tucker’s death was considered “imminent,” so when efforts to contact his family failed, doctors used his heart without familial consent for the first successful heart transplant in Virginia, only the 16th in the world.
Lower, Tucker’s surgeon, raised Richmond’s profile in the medical world before and after the transplant. Many of his students went on to start or lead top cardiac programs at Chippenham and Johnston-Willis, St. Mary’s, and Henrico Doctors’ hospitals. While MCV lost its status as a leading heart hospital in the decades following the transplant, the 20-year-old Pauley Heart Center at VCU Health has regained some of that prestige, helping turn VCU Health into best heart hospital in the state for the fourth consecutive year, according to U.S. News & World Report.
In the wake of the procedure, while Richmond’s hospitals quickly advanced, Tucker’s history took years to come to light. Today, heart doctors — especially those involved in organ transplants — follow strict federal regulations on informed consent inspired by cases similar to Tucker’s while building on the foundation of success his sacrifice enabled.
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A mural honoring Bruce Tucker at VCU Health’s McGlothlin Medical Education Center (Photo by Kevin Morley courtesy VCU Enterprise Marketing and Communications)
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VCU Medical Center unveiled a plaque honoring Tucker in late 2025, pictured here with members of Tucker’s family. (Photo by Daan Hoffmeyer courtesy VCU Enterprise Marketing and Communications)
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A historical marker honoring Bruce Tucker (Photo by Allen Jones courtesy VCU Enterprise Marketing and Communications)
The Pulse of Progress
“I think the Bruce Tucker story is top of mind in the way we interact with our patients,” says Sheryl Garland, chief of health impact at the VCU Health System. “It’s ingrained in our culture and the way we deliver service.”
VCU first addressed Tucker and his case after the August 2020 publication of “The Organ Thieves: The Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South,” a nonfiction book investigating the incident and subsequent lawsuit, by Richmond journalist and author Chip Jones. In 2022, the book won the Library of Virginia’s Literary Award for Nonfiction and was chosen as VCU’s Common Book, shared with all first-year students. That year, a resolution from the VCU Board of Visitors and the VCU Health System Board of Directors formally acknowledged and apologized for how Tucker was treated.
Since 2023, VCU and VCU Health have collaborated with Tucker family representative Gayle Turner to incorporate commemorations of Tucker into VCU Health’s campus. Additions include several plaques at the VCU Medical Center; murals, one depicting Tucker; and the renaming of an auditorium at the McGlothin Medical Education Center in Tucker’s honor. The VCU School of Medicine also includes Tucker’s case as part of its medical curriculum. In 2024, the Virginia General Assembly unanimously passed a resolution “acknowledging with profound regret the unethical use of Black bodies by medical institutions in the Commonwealth,” specifically naming Tucker.
“We have been very intentional in providing opportunities for our students, in all health professions, to learn about Mr. Tucker’s case and understand how this case has created an environment where we are hypersensitive to engagement with our patients,” Garland adds.
As changing procedures and new technology give local hospitals the opportunity to push the field into a new era, keeping informed consent in mind could bring the region’s cardiac care to greater heights while avoiding mistakes of the past.
Dr. Patricia Nicolato of VCU Health (Photo by Joe Morris courtesy Scott Diegelmann)
“There have been a lot of advances in heart surgery,” says Dr. Patricia Nicolato, VCU Health’s chief of cardiothoracic surgery. “When I first started at VCU in 2004, for example, the heart-assist devices were powered by large consoles that sat at the end of the bed. Now they’re a small, implantable pump in the heart with a portable power source.”
Robotics, she notes, are the wave of the future at VCU. Already, thoracic surgeons are using robots for the majority of their operations, and the cardiac practice will be using robotic techniques in the near future.
At Bon Secours, cardiac surgeon Dr. Brody Wehman credits a new collaborative model for saving lives. “About a month ago, we had a patient in the ER at St. Mary’s, and I got a message that she has a pulmonary embolism. She’s breathing fast, her blood pressure is on the low side; it looks like she’s struggling,” he says. This triggered a notification to the hospital’s Pulmonary Embolism Response Team, alerting surgery, radiology and other physicians from the ICU and ER to quickly assist, improving the patient’s odds of survival.
Wehman says that after the whole team worked on the woman’s treatment plan, “she was able to walk out of the hospital and be home for Thanksgiving with her family, because we have the right services and the right response team, where every specialty weighs in on the treatment plan.”
Even common heart surgeries, such as the coronary artery bypass, have progressed in recent years. “In a sense, it is the same surgery, where you use a vein from the leg and an artery from the chest wall to bypass, or go around, the blockages in the heart,” Wehman says. “What’s changed is, we do it in a way that’s much less traumatic. The incision in the chest is smaller, and, on the leg, we use a video camera to harvest from the thigh. Even 20 years ago, it was routine that the entire thigh down to the shin was filleted open and, especially in a diabetic person, it could take a long time to heal. We also know how to take care of the patients much better after the surgery. ... We’ve learned how to mitigate the pain and the complications.”
Robotic assistance has become a staple in surgical procedures, seen here in use at the VCU Health Hume-Lee Transplant Center. (Photo courtesy VCU Enterprise Marketing and Communications)
Cardiac care innovations haven’t just helped adults. Last year at Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU, a 12-year-old boy became the first child in the region to receive a leadless pacemaker; the leadless version removes the need for an attached generator, the primary source of pacemaker malfunctions in children.
The 2024 opening of a cardiac catheterization and electrophysiology lab at the children's hospital has allowed for improved specialty care for more patients, expanding cardiac medicine in the area beyond adult care.
“We’re the only children’s hospital in the state that can actually go into the NICU [Neonatal Intensive Care Unit] to perform bedside heart catheterizations to close persistent patent ductus arteriosus, a tiny hole in the heart,” says Dr. John Phillips, director of pediatric electrophysiology at the children’s hospital. “At least four NICUs in the state send their [premature babies] to us so we can do that procedure. This and the leadless pacemaker? Those are the cool things.”
An Informed Approach
Procedures that have helped develop cardiac care in the region, Tucker’s among them, have not only improved response times and success rates, they have also benefited patients with more intentional communication around protecting patients’ rights.
“After Mr. Tucker’s death and a lawsuit that was brought by his family against the Medical College of Virginia, there was a great deal of activity and discussion around informed consent, which led to changes in policies and practices not only at our hospital, but nationally,” Garland says.
Heart surgeons working on transplant cases note that safeguards for patients and their families extend to specialized training for clinicians. “When you train to become a procurement surgeon, you have to train with UNOS [United Network for Organ Sharing, a Richmond-based nonprofit that manages the transplant system for the federal government], and the families have to give signed permission,” Nicolato says.
I think the Bruce Tucker story is top of mind in the way we interact with our patients. It’s ingrained in our culture and the way we deliver service.
—Sheryl Garland, chief of health impact, VCU Health System
In addition, if a potential donor hasn’t given advance permission for organ donation, a third-party organ procurement specialist will lead a conversation with the family to avoid possible coercion in the process.
Such engagement, and the informed consent required for any transplant, are par for the course for all physicians practicing today. But without the outrage that stemmed from cases including Tucker’s, informed consent might never have progressed to become standard protocol.
“Mr. Tucker’s story [changed] how providers are engaging with their patients around not just implementation of procedures, but the compassionate conversations with families during the process by providers, the pastoral care department [and] social workers,” Garland says. “For us, Mr. Tucker’s case really did shine a light on the need to be more diligent and reflective with how we engage with all people.”
