Awards

Honorary Degree - 1951

LL.D.

Doctor of Laws

Commencement

Bloomington, Indiana

Presenter: Herman B Wells

About Oscar Noel Torian

Oscar Noel Torian was born in Evansville, Indiana. He graduated in 1896 from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. He then earned his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1900. Dr. Torian served on the faculty of IU School of Medicine in 1908 as an assistant professor of pediatrics. He was one of only a half dozen medical professionals that served on the James Whitcomb Riley Memorial Association’s Joint Executive Committee. The committee, made up of representatives from both the Association and Indiana University, was extensively consulted for advice on the design of the James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children. Dr. Torian was not only a member of the original Pediatrics Department for IU School of Medicine in 1908; he also was a member of the original medical team for the James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children when the hospital opened in 1924.

Upon his retirement in 1941, Dr. Torian and returned to Tennessee, where the pressing needs for medical care by children in Sewanee’s rural Franklin County drove him immediately back to work as a pediatrician for the next 30 years. Dr. Torian provided free medical treatment – as well as bandages, medicine, and prescriptions – to families too poor to pay for medical care. He treated hundreds of babies in the Emerald-Hodgson Hospital, the only fully equipped children’s hospital between Nashville and Chattanooga. When people who could afford it began to pay him, those fees went towards “The Children’s Fund,” a large-scale fund-raising project to build Dr. Torian’s dream – a twelve bed children’s wing for the Emerald-Hodgson Hospital. The fund-raising project launched into full swing with an initial donation of $18,000 from Josiah Kirby Lilly, Jr. of the Eli Lilly Company in Indianapolis. Dr. Torian had taken care of the Lilly family’s children in Indianapolis and became a family friend. In September 1950, the first Children’s Wing opened, and before his death in 1971, Dr. Torian secured a $300,000 endowment for the Children’s Wing.

Dr. Torian’s exemplary contributions to advance the field of pediatric medicine, and true leadership in both the Riley and Indiana University families, was recognized in 1951 when he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws from Indiana University.