OQUOSSOC — A health care activist and philanthropist who has been coming to Oquossoc since 1955 has funded a new fellowship program for cancer research at Columbia University Medical Center’s Department of Surgery in New York City.

A. G. “Terry” Newmyer III is creating the Newmyer Family Fellowship for Innovation in Surgery. The fellowship program will begin in 2018. The first Newmyer Fellow, Dr. Marc Najjar, will gather data on the regeneration of healthy livers and will study the outcomes of using small grafts in organ transplantation. The data will allow physicians and scientists to better understand and employ surgical techniques for the treatment and removal of cancerous tumors.

As a health care volunteer, Newmyer was founder of The Fair Care Foundation, a patient advocacy group; has served on numerous boards of health care organizations; and is president of the new Opioid Research Institute of the United States, a project of the Kanter Health Foundation on whose board Newmyer serves.

Newmyer did not disclose the size of the donation, but Columbia considers it a “major gift.”

A.G. Newmyer III