By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
Dr. Michael Attas' life reads like a Hollywood script or Dickens novel, with enough twists, turns and drama to make the reader keep turning the pages and the moviegoer sitting on the edge of his seat.
During one "magical" but exhausting period of his life, he worked 70 to 80 hours a week as chief cardiologist at Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center, taught two classes per semester in the Medical Humanities program he founded at Baylor and preached at St. Paul's Episcopal on Sundays.
"I was juggling three hats," he said. "It was busy, but I loved every minute of it. It's not like anything I was doing wasn't fun, it was just hard work."
Dr. Attas' life, his legacy, will be recognized on the "B" Association Wall of Honor that includes such names as Jack Lummus, Hayden Fry, Mark Hurd, Jay Allison, Clyde Hart and Dutch Schroeder. Started in 2001, the Wall of Honor recognizes Baylor letterwinners and graduates whose meritorious accomplishments in public or private life following graduation have brought positive public recognition, credit and honor to Baylor and the athletics department.
"It's hard for me to put into words the gratitude that I feel for Baylor and the athletic program," Dr. Attas said. "I don't know what I would have done without athletics. I probably would have gone to UT and gotten some kind of degree, but I would not have had near the fulfilling life that I did had it not been for Baylor sports."
If high school and college All-American Chris Gilbert had gotten his wish, Attas would have ended up at the University of Texas. They were football teammates at Spring Branch High School, the best man in each other's wedding and "we still talk to each other every month or so."
"Chris really wanted me to come to Texas, and I really wanted him to come to Baylor, but we made our own choices," Attas said. "I don't think I could have gone to med school if I had gone to UT. I would have been distracted by ancillary and unnamed activities."
A good enough high school player to be recruited by a lot of the old Southwest Conference schools, Attas said Baylor was "kind of in my DNA." His parents had actually met at Baylor and his dad, Mickey, was a football letterman in 1945.
Michael Attas III's biggest highlight on the college gridiron was playing for Catfish Smith's freshman team in 1965, when he started both ways and earned All-SWC Freshman honors at linebacker and offensive guard . . . at 5-11, 195 pounds.
"Catfish liked small guys and always gave me a shot," Attas said. "I ended up starting on offense, defense and special teams. I never came out of the game. We were so thin talent-wise that after the first game, Catfish asked me if I'd be willing to play the whole game. I said, 'Sure, why not.'"
As a sophomore, Attas got significantly less playing time behind All-American defensive lineman Greg Pipes. But, he was standing on the sidelines on Sept. 10, 1966, when Baylor coach John Bridgers sent in halfback John Westbrook and broke the Southwest Conference color barrier in a 35-14 upset of seventh-ranked Syracuse on national television.
Two years later, Westbrook asked Attas to speak on the gospel and racial reconciliation at his Fifth Ward church in Houston.
"This is two or three weeks after Martin Luther King was assassinated and Robert Kennedy had already been assassinated," Attas said. "The nation was in flames, both metaphorically and physically. It was every bit as contemptuous as what's going on now.
"There I am – white kid, 19, 20 years old, Fifth Ward of Houston, 500 black faces and me. After the hour we were together, it was magical. I felt the love and the concern and the fear for my black friends' future and for this country."
After losing most of his junior season when he had to have an infected cyst removed from his back, Attas opted to give up football and concentrate on his education. Longtime physics professor Dr. Robert Packard helped him pay for his last year of undergrad studies, getting him a position as a lab instructor.
While working with Dr. Denton Cooley at a research lab in Houston the summer before his junior year at Baylor, Attas was allowed to be the lead author on an article on cardiology that was published in one of the largest heart journals in the world.
"I was kind of drawn to cardiology, but I didn't know if I had the capabilities or the stamina to do it," he said. "It wasn't until I actually got a little bit into my training that it became clear to me that this is what I'm supposed to do. But, the seeds were planted that junior year."
Graduating from Baylor in 1969 with a degree in psychology, Attas began a journey that took him to Galveston, Lexington, Ky., Cheyenne, Wyo., and Denver, Colo., before returning to Waco in 1983.
Earning his MD from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston in 1973, he did his training in internal medicine, cardiology and pediatric cardiology at the University of Kentucky. As a cardiologist and clinical associate professor, he commuted from Cheyenne to Denver two days a week to teach, do research and perform procedures.
"We were in Wyoming and Colorado for five years," he said, "and my wife told me that fifth winter, 'I'm not going to raise our kids in this kind of snow year around, so you better start looking for a job in Texas.'''
Although he "never thought in a million years I'd come back to Waco," Michael did just that in 1983 when he joined a few of his med school classmates with Waco Cardiology Associates. He retired as chief cardiologist at Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center in 2017.
"I was 69 years old, and your stamina is just not what it was in your 40s or 50s," he said. "I wanted to spend more time with my family, so it was time to let go and see what's out there after 40 years of pedal-to-the-metal kind of stuff."
During his "pedal-to-the-metal" stage, Attas added a masters of divinity from Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in 1999.
"Part of that was a calling to actually do ministry," said Attas, who served on the staff at St. Paul's Episcopal in Waco, "but a part of it was a calling to teach and help Baylor students integrate faith and medicine."
It was at those crossroads that Attas helped establish the first national undergraduate program in medical humanities at Baylor in 1999. He also directed the program and was successful in securing funding from the DeBakey Medical Foundation for outstanding medical humanities students.
"I taught in that program for 18 years while I was still doing cardiology and I was still doing ministry on Sundays," he said.
And in his spare time, he's also an expert fly fisherman and serves as a guide at his second home in Colorado. In 2012, he co-authored the book, Fly Fishing – The Sacred Art: Casting a Fly as a Spiritual Practice, with Jewish Rabbi Eric Eisenkramer.
"That's a lifelong hobby," he said. "I fell in love with it in medical school and traveled all over the world doing it. . . . (In the book), we looked at Judaism and Christianity and kind of used fly fishing as a metaphor for how we understand God's work in this world."
Now retired, Dr. Attas and his wife, Gail, spend half the year in Waco and the other six months at their home in Colorado. His son, Jason, is the president, founder and lead investigator with Cornerstone Intelligence in Waco; his older daughter, Jessica Attas, is vice president for public policy for the Waco Chamber of Commerce; and younger daughter, Amanda Satcher, lives in Nashville, where her husband, Bill, is the lead guitarist for the Southern Rock band, A Thousand Horses.
"I do some volunteer guiding for different non-profit entities and spend a lot of time with the grandkids," he said. "We're enjoying it. I'm involved with a few odds and ends and hobbies and boards, but nothing that doesn't bring me joy and nothing that I consider work."
Due to COVID-19, arrangements for the Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame banquet are still pending. The 2020 Hall of Fame class includes football players Brad Goebel, Andrew Melontree and Jason Smith, tennis All-Americans Lenka Broosova and Lars Poerschke, volleyball's Anna Breyfogle, softball's Brette Reagan and track & field's Todd Cooper.
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