The ‘life-changing’ lessons medical students learn from dissecting cadavers
From left: Haitham Rghebi Aja Ceesay and Trinity Liaw are medical students at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. (Patrick Lantrip/The Daily Memphian)
Ellen “Faye” Brooks loved life.
She loved cooking, traveling, playing cards and gathering with her big family: her three children, nine grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren.
She was friendly, outgoing and seemed to encounter people she knew wherever she went.
But in recent years, Brooks’ health deteriorated. In August 2020, she caught a life-threatening case of COVID-19. In December 2023, she was diagnosed with cryptogenic organizing pneumonia and was hospitalized a dozen times for breathing issues. In April 2024, she moved from the house she’d been in for 62 years to an assisted living facility, and in June 2024, she was put on oxygen.
Brooks was comforted, however, knowing what would happen to her failing body after she died.
In 2011, she had agreed to donate it to the University of Tennessee Health Science Center where it would be used to help educate the state’s next generation of doctors and health care professionals.
“I know that’s what she wanted so much,” said Paula Butram, Brooks’ daughter. “She was so passionate about giving this donation, and she even told other people at assisted living that it’s what she was doing.”
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John Klyce
John Klyce is an enterprise reporter with The Daily Memphian who writes a wide range of in-depth features, as well as profiles about local leaders, scientists, musicians, artists, entrepreneurs, and anyone else doing exciting and important work in this city. He previously spent four years with the Memphis Business Journal, where he covered public companies, startups, and innovation, and a fifth year with The Commercial Appeal, where he covered education, and chronicled how gun violence and poverty were affecting Memphis youth and their families. He has also been a fellow with the Institute for Citizens and Scholars. John has a B.A. in journalism from the University of Memphis and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Boston University.
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