James "Red" Duke

James Henry "Red" Duke, Jr. (November 16, 1928 – August 25, 2015) was a trauma surgeon and professor at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center, where he worked on-site since 1972. He was instrumental in introducing Memorial Hermann's Life Flight program and bringing a level I trauma center to Houston. Outside Texas, he is probably most famous for the nationally syndicated television spot called Texas Health Reports or Dr. Red Duke's Health Reports, which aired for fifteen years.

Duke was born in Ennis, Texas. He graduated from Hillsboro High School and later earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Texas A&M University in 1950. He served as a yell leader at Texas A&M and was the first person to deliver the poem "The Last Corps Trip" publicly.

He served a two-year tour of duty as a tank officer in the 2nd Armored Division of the U.S. Army and then earned a divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1955. After reading a book by Albert Schweitzer, he changed vocations to medicine and enrolled in the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, from which he received his M.D. in 1960.

Duke completed his internship in internal medicine and his residency in general surgery at Dallas' Parkland Memorial Hospital in 1965. During his residency, Duke was the first surgeon to receive President John F. Kennedy at Parkland after he was shot in Dallas in 1963, then attended to the wounds of then Texas Governor John Connally.

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