The Rutgers Legacy of Lonnie Wright

Lawrence “Lonnie” Wright played professional basketball and football before embarking on his career of cheering on generations of students, inspiring them to dream bigger and go to medical school. Today, a Rutgers scholarship bears his name.

For countless medical students during Lonnie Wright’s 36-year admissions career at Rutgers, his office was a haven for talking about challenges in their academic and personal lives.

For more than three decades, Wright worked to recruit, admit, and retain students for the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School (NJMS), which is part of Rutgers Health and formerly part of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

Roger A. Mitchell Jr. NJMS'03

Roger A. Mitchell Jr.—who earned his medical degree at NJMS in 2003 and is now president of Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C. —was one of the students Wright inspired. While navigating the rigors of medical school, Mitchell got married and had a child—three major life events, any one of which would be challenging by itself. But thanks to an open door and listening ear from Wright, he found the inspiration and encouragement to excel.

“He gave me perspective on balance,” says Mitchell, who is a distant cousin of Wright, but had not known him before medical school. “He had a way of cutting right to the chase and ensuring you didn't spend too much time in pity. He was a real proponent of taking ownership and in that ownership, gaining strength.”

Deborah Price NJMS'86

After Wright’s death in 2012 at the age of 67, his former students established the Lonnie Wright Memorial Endowed Scholarship supporting Rutgers medical students. Deborah Price, who earned her medical degree at New Jersey Medical School in 1986, says she contributes to this fund in gratitude for the help Wright gave her as an out-of-state student from Maryland.

“That was my first time away from home, leaving the nest,” says Price, now a nephrologist in Jacksonville, Florida. “I could tell he really cared about us. He was someone we’d go talk to when things weren’t going well. When I saw someone started this memorial fund, I knew whoever started it would want the scholarship to go to a student Lonnie would have supported.”

A Sports Legend, A Life Coach

Wright played with the Denver Nuggets from 1967-71.

In 1967, Wright achieved the rare feat of playing on two professional sports teams in a single season: the Denver Rockets and the Denver Broncos. He also was inducted into athletic halls of fame for Newark, New Jersey, and Colorado State University and earned many other athletic honors.

But perhaps Wright’s most significant number is 2,000. That’s the estimated number of youths in New Jersey Wright helped, encouraged, and inspired to become medical doctors.

Wright’s sports career—which included intercepting a Joe Namath pass and scoring over Julius “Dr. J.” Erving—played into his academic-life coaching. Mitchell, who will be the medical school’s convocation speaker in May, says Wright often equated a pro athlete’s level of discipline, excellence, and fortitude with what it would take to become a physician.

Wright played two season for the Denver Broncos.

“He was bigger than life,” Mitchell says. “He had a big, big smile, a big laugh, and he encouraged those of us who sat at his feet to be big as well. He encouraged me not to shrink—we weren't to shrink in the midst of adversity, we were to stand up to adversity.”

Wright retired in 2010, having successfully led the school’s efforts to recruit students, often by showing them that medical school was a realistic option for them. He also recruited students to summer programs, positioning them to get into other prestigious medical schools, and encouraged countless others to pursue careers in other medically related fields.

Covering two or three generations of doctors and future doctors, his exponential reach went far in changing the face of medicine in the U.S.

“Lonnie could dream bigger dreams for young people than they could dream for themselves,” his widow Johanna Wright told the Star-Ledger in 2012. “And he was good at helping make them come true. And he did that right up to the moment he died.”