Dr. Jose Manuel de la Rosa entered the gross anatomy lab, paused between two metal tanks and glanced around the massive room.

Taking in the pungent odor of formaldehyde, the founding dean of the Texas Tech University Paul L. Foster School of Medicine in El Paso with a wry smile said "smells like first year."

The lab is where first-year medical students get an introduction to anatomy by dissecting and identifying body parts in their first patient, a human cadaver.

It was in a gross anatomy lab in fall 1980 at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine in Lubbock where de la Rosa gleaned more from the lab than knowledge of the body.

There, lying in a liquid-filled metal tank, was Dr. Robert Barajas Jr., de la Rosa's senior biology teacher from Cathedral High School.

It's a story de la Rosa often tells people who are touring the cadaver lab at the fledgling El Paso medical school and fellow Cathedral alumni.

Doctors had diagnosed Barajas, a pathologist, with the kidney disease lupus nephritis. He died from complications of the disorder in 1979 at the age of 37.

Barajas was serving as an Army Medical Corps captain at Beaumont Army Medical Center when he was diagnosed with the disease. He received medical retirement and then took a job teaching at Cathedral, where had graduated high school in 1960.

A couple days a week, Barajas would have an open forum for the students, allowing them to ask questions about any topic they wanted.

Eventually

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Texas Tech University Paul L. Foster School of Medicine dean tested in unlikely place