Speaking of Texas: Monroe Dunaway Anderson

By Gene Fowler

Travelers passing through the thousand-acre Texas Medical Center in Houston sometimes wonder if they’ve entered a strange alternate universe. People on the street—clad in everything from white lab coats to colorful Indian saris to trendy T-shirts—speak in languages ranging from Polish to Portuguese. From more than 100 countries they come, joining some 60,000 Texans a year, on a journey of healing to one of the center’s most famous facilities: The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. But while the institution’s cutting-edge patient care, research, and programs are known in every corner of the globe, its namesake remains something of a mystery.

Monroe Dunaway Anderson (1873-1939) was born in Tennessee, the sixth of eight children. After a short banking career in his hometown of Jackson, Monroe joined his older brother Frank and Frank’s brother-in-law, Will Clayton, in the cotton-trading firm of Anderson, Clayton and Company. Drawn by Houston’s proximity to the port of Galveston and the city’s robust banking environment, Monroe moved to Houston in 1907. By 1916, Houston had become the company’s headquarters. In the ensuing decades, Anderson, Clayton and Company grew to be the largest buyer, seller and shipper of raw cotton in the world.

In contrast to some of the state’s more flamboyant millionaires, M. D. Anderson lived a quiet life. He never married, and instead of a River Oaks mansion, he hung his hat in a series of downtown Houston hotels. His late nephew Thomas D. Anderson wrote that his uncle’s “most prominent characteristics were frugality and thrift, industry and integrity,” traits that rewarded the modest businessman with great wealth. “He was also,” continued the nephew, “friendly, humble, kind, humorous, and a little bashful.”

Motivated by a desire to help less fortunate citizens help themselves and to provide care for the sick, the elderly, and others in need, the Houston businessman established the M. D. Anderson Foundation in 1936. Dedicated to “the promotion of health, science, education, and advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding,” the foundation received $19,000,000 from Anderson’s estate upon his death in 1939.

Two years later, when the Texas Legislature appropriated $500,000 for The University of Texas to establish a hospital for cancer research and treatment, the foundation agreed to match that investment if the hospital was built in Houston and named for the foundation’s benefactor.
 
M. D. Anderson’s sprawling complex of steel-and-glass, state-of-the-art facilities help some 85,000 people a year face one of humanity’s greatest health challenges. U.S. News and World Report magazine’s” America’s Best Hospitals” survey for 2008 named M. D. Anderson the top hospital in the nation for cancer care. Last fiscal year, more than $400million was invested in research to fulfill the institution’s mission of” Making Cancer History.”

Children’s Art Project

See the full article in the April 2009 issue.

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