Jason Jack comes home to Alabama

Dr. Jason Jack

The Oxford Independent, July 14, 2006

The quarterback who led Oxford High to its first two football state championships began his true career this week, joining the Hedden Plastic Surgery Center in Birmingham as its second doctor.

"I appreciate Dr. Hedden for offering me a great opportunity to join a busy practice," says Jason Jack, 34.

Jack returned to Alabama this month with his wife, Meleesa, and their one-year-old son, Evan, after six years in Lexington, Kentucky, where Jack completed a six-year residency in plastic surgery at the University of Kentucky Medical Center. While they loved the bluegrass country and developed an avid interest in thoroughbred horse racing, they knew they would return to Alabama.

"We knew we'd be coming back home, and we're glad to be back," says Jack. The family has settled in Homewood.

When he entered U.A.B. medical school as a first year student, Jack says he had an idea he wanted to be a surgeon, but it wasn't until his third year that he found a specific direction for his medical career. That direction came in the form of a teacher on the faculty, a Dr. Luis Vasconez, head of plastic surgery.

"Every day he was so enthusiastic about whatever case we had that day," Jack says. "His enthusiasm sparked my enthusiasm."

Through the eyes of a passionate mentor, Jack saw plastic surgery as a way to improve the lives of patients who had suffered injuries or were born with defects, something "no other specialty offered."

Perhaps not surprisingly, after finishing medical school, Jack chose the residency program at Kentucky that was directed by Vasconez's younger brother, Dr. Henry Vasconez. This instructor made a point to return every year for a few weeks to his home country of Ecuador, where he did helpful plastic surgeries for the poor. Jack accompanied him on one of these trips, and it deepened his appreciation for his profession. They spent their time operating on children with cleft palates, hare lips, and deformed ears.

"When I saw the look on one mother's face after she saw what we would do for her child, she looked as if the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders," Jack says. "I knew we were doing something worthwhile."

In another international trip, Jack spoke at the 2005 International Society of Craniofacial Surgery in Queensland, Australia, about a case involving an infant whose skull bones were fused and had to be surgically repaired.

Jack says Dr. Hedden also trained with Vasconez and shares the same enthusiasm and concern for patient welfare.

"I feel like we have the same philosophy about patient care," he says.

Even as jack moved into the top levels of his medical training, the mystique of his football career was never far from him. His fellow residents at Kentucky would see him wear his state championship rings on special occasions; they discussed the relative merits of basketball and football, of Alabama versus Kentucky. He became known as "the football player."

Students from the medical school doing month-long rotations with Jack and the other plastic surgery residents would, after a few days of plastic surgery questions, ask to hear about his football days.

"Every month, I told the same stories to a different set of medical students," he says. "I'm sure all the other residents got tired of hearing it."

Jack attended the University of Alabama on a full football scholarship and he views his college days as "revolving around being on the football team." Through he had been a star in high school, he soon realized that his playing would be very limited in college. He was the same year as Jay Barker, one of the best quarterbacks in college at the time, and since most games turned out to be close, there weren't many opportunities for the third or fourth string quarterback to get in the game.

"It was frustrating at first," Jack says. "But, after I accepted that, it got fun again and I'd go to practice and help the team as the scout quarterback."

The "scout" quarterback learns the offense of the opposing team for the week and leads the "scout" offense against the first string defense, to prepare for the upcoming game. Jack had what a good scout quarterback needs - the ability and work ethic to learn new information quickly and put it into practice. While the job is usually a thankless one, for Jack there was a high point.

"When we were preparing for the (1992) national championship game against Miami, I got to be Gino Toretta, who won the Heisman Trophy that year," Jack says.

Those who remember the game remember the dominance of the Alabama defense. After the victory, the team's defensive coordinator, Bill Oliver, made a point of sitting Jack down and thanking him for his role in helping to prepare the defense for the game.

But by far his most rewarding football days, and most of his football stories, were those from high school. Jack was the starting quarterback for the Oxford Yellow Jackets during his junior year, when the team went undefeated and won its first state championship, in the fall of 1988. During his senior year, the Yellow Jackets lost only a one-point thriller to then Class 6A Anniston, before going on to win a second state championship in Class 5A in 1989.

"There is probably not a month that goes by when I don't think about it in some way," Jack says of his high school football days. "Those are fond memories."

What seems to be most memorable is that he and the friends he grew up playing sports with were able to experience it together.

"We had a special class and in that class was a group of people who grew up playing sports together." He remembers. "We all had the same goal of winning the state championship, of doing something for the community that had never been done before, and we accomplished it."

Return to News & Features