Lindsay Jinkins always knew she would grow up to be a doctor. And she knew that she would attend medical school at UTMB. After all, it’s been a tradition in the Jinkins’ family for more than 100 years — almost as long as there has been a UTMB.

She will be the fourth generation of Jinkinses to graduate from the School of Medicine, following the footsteps of her great-grandfather, Wiley Junior Jinkins, who had moved to Galveston from Normangee, Texas and graduated in 1911.  
 
Wiley had two brothers, A.J. Jinkins and J.L. Jinkins, both of whom also graduated from UTMB’s medical school and set up practices in Galveston. The two brothers’ sons, A.J. Jinkins Jr. and J.L. Jinkins Jr., also graduated from UTMB’s School of Medicine.
 
Counting Lindsay’s grandfather and father, Lindsay is the eighth member of the Jinkins family to graduate from UTMB.
 
“It’s was kind of a thing in the family,” says Lindsay’s father, Dr. Wiley Junior Jinkins III. “You went into medicine at UTMB.” Then he adds with a smile, “There were no other considerations.”
 
Daughter and father spent some time recently comparing their experiences in Galveston and at UTMB. Dad is unabashedly proud of Lindsay and his alma mater, noting that the campus has grown dramatically since he graduated in 1972. 
 
Sitting in the Joe Jamail Student Center, Dad ticked off the names of some people at UTMB who were here then and now, including Drs. Joan Richardson, Melvyn Schreiber and Jack Alperin.
 
“I think what’s really neat about UTMB is how many people do stay and build a great career here and give back to the university,” Lindsay says.
 
They agreed that their on-hands clinical experiences they had as medical students at UTMB gives them an advantage over graduates of other medical schools.
 
Dad, who did his residency at the University of California, San Francisco, still remembers that “the other interns were so much further behind than what I knew. They had never started an IV. They had never really seen a patient.”
 
And the clinical experience for medical students at UTMB has progressed even further over the years. Lindsay, who will be a resident in surgery at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center in Albuquerque, took part in 30 cesarean deliveries before the start of her third year of medical school.
 
“I’ve had great training, and I’m certain that no student at any other medical school has had as much clinical experience as we did,” Lindsay says.
 
Dad moved his family from Galveston to Colorado in 1990 when Lindsay was six. And Lindsay’s return to Galveston four years ago meant that she was returning to her family’s and her own roots — she was born at St. Mary’s Hospital adjacent to UTMB. And her dad and mom, Loren, a registered nurse, met in an operating room at UTMB — but it was her great-grandfather who started it all, back in 1911.
 
“I’m just honored to be part of a family with such a strong tradition of physicians,” she says. “It feels like it’s in my blood to be a healer.”