On the evening of Aug. 27 in Dallas, James Suen, M.D., was honored at the Becoming Whole charity event celebrating “restoring lives in Ukraine” and offering guests a chance to “meet the surgeons, patients and leaders behind the mission.”
Suen, a Distinguished Professor in the UAMS Department of Otolaryngology in the UAMS College of Medicine, volunteers on repeated medical missions to Ukraine, performing complex reconstructive surgeries on children and wounded soldiers while training Ukrainian surgeons.
He has worked for more than 50 years at UAMS and started the otolaryngology and head-and-neck surgical specialty at the university. Many of those surgeries involved cancer surgeries, and with Kent Westbrook, M.D., Suen helped found the Arkansas Cancer Research Center, which later grew into the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute.
Ed’s Friends (USA), LEAP Global Missions (USA), and the Christian Medical Association organized the event. Ed’s Friends Ukraine is a nonprofit started by Ed Ma, a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine (2003-2005). (The event also honored plastic surgeon Jorge Corona, M.D., who leads Ukraine medical missions, and Michelle Hollaender, who is the founder of charity organization IEP and has more than 24 years of nonprofit leadership experience.)
The world knows Dr. James Suen as one of America’s leading reconstructive surgeons and former physician to President Bill Clinton. We know him as someone who chose time and again to return to Ukraine. He has stood beside children, civilians, and wounded defenders whose stories are part of this exhibition. He has worked shoulder to shoulder with Ukrainian surgeons, sharing not only his expertise but his belief in what healing can restore.
His legacy lives not only in the patients he has helped heal but in the surgeons he has taught, the friendships he has built, and the knowledge that will reign long after each mission ends.
For us, Dr. Suen’s commitment to Ukraine is both an extraordinary honor and a reminder these stories deserve to be seen, heard, and carried forward.
Dr. Suen came to Ukraine to help people heal. In doing so, he helped build something that will outlast any one mission.
