A Tribute to Professor Emeritus Steve Adair
Steve Adair has great stories to share from his four-decade career as a large-animal surgeon. “I’ve done inductions for reticulated giraffe and exploratory surgeries on polar bears. I’ve fixed rhinoceroses and done surgeries on elephants.” He’s also a health consultant for the Anheuser-Busch Budweiser Clydesdales. But, for Adair, his most memorable experiences at the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine have been “working with the students, interns, and residents.”
The professor emeritus of equine surgery and sports medicine and rehabilitation has had a role in teaching the majority of the college’s leadership: Dean Paul Plummer and faculty members Carla Sommardahl, Diane Hendrix, and Billy Thomas. Not bad for a fellow who says in a southern drawl, “I’m from LA Lower Alabama.”
Adair’s legacy as a mentor, scholar, practitioner, and industry leader has now been recognized with the establishment of the Adair Fund, which provides ongoing support to Equine Sports Medicine Rehabilitation and ensures that his vision will thrive through groundbreaking research.
UTCVM has been Adair’s “second home” since 1986, when he was accepted, last-minute, for a residency in large-animal surgery. After earning his veterinary degree at Auburn University and practicing for a few years at a clinic in Louisiana, Adair saw the residency as a new opportunity to pursue his love of working with horses. “Basically, I got tired of digging out hoof abscesses,” he says, joking. He would soon join the UTCVM faculty, become board certified in equine surgery, and begin the work that would establish him as a leader in the field.
“Back then it was thirty days in a stall, thirty days in a paddock, and thirty days kicked out in pasture,” Adair remembers. In collaboration with Darryl Millis, a professor of orthopedic surgery who was doing similar rehabilitation work with dogs, he looked to human medicine for inspiration and began advocating for new techniques and new resources. Both Adair and Millis were later selected as charter members of the American College of Veterinary Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation.
UTCVM’s commitment to innovative equine practice achieved a major milestone in 2013, with the opening of the Equine Performance and Rehabilitation Center (EPRC), which serves as both a working clinic, staffed by equine rehabilitation specialists and veterinary technicians, and a state-of-the-art educational experience for the first university-based Equine Rehabilitation Certification Program. Adair was instrumental in the design and inception of the center.
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