The portrait of James McLester was commissioned by the American Medical Association in the late 1940s. A portrait by artist Jay Wesley Jacobs of James Somerville McLester, M.D., LLD, was unveiled Jan. 18 in the main lobby of the UAB Community Health Services Building, the site where McLester’s primary care-focused practice formerly stood.
McLester was born in Tuscaloosa in 1877, earned his bachelor of arts degree from the University of Alabama, and received his medical degree from the University of Virginia. He served as chief of Medicine at the School of Medicine when it was located in Tuscaloosa, and was named the first chair and professor of Medicine at the new Medical College of Alabama when it opened in Birmingham in 1945. He remained in that position until his retirement in 1949. He is remembered for his leadership during the School of Medicine’s transition from a two-year pre-clinical medical school to a four-year medical degree-granting institution.