Thomas Wolfe said it best in the title of his book, You Can't Go Home Again but Ron DeLellis has proved him wrong. Indeed, not only once, but on more than one occasion. Ronald A. DeLellis was born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island. It was in high school (in the ninth grade, no less) that he met and eventually married Dolores, his lovely and vivacious wife and companion of 39 years. He received his B.A. from Brown University with Honors in Biology for his thesis, Histochemistry of the Salt Gland. Ron graduated cum laude from Tufts University School of Medicine and completed a year at the Massachusetts General Hospital as a Research Fellow and Acting Intern in Pathology. He then spent 4 years as a commissioned officer in the Public Health Service at the NIH and the NCI. He returned to Boston to assume his first staff position as attending pathologist at University Hospital (Boston University School of Medicine). Following his stint at the Mallory, Ron "went back home" for the first time when he returned to his medical school alma mater in 1973 as Assistant Pathologist and Assistant Professor at Tufts University and New England Medical Center. There he steadily rose through the ranks to become Full Professor and the Director of Surgical Pathology, then subsequently, the Director of Anatomic Pathology. Ron remained at Tufts for 27 years, an exceedingly rich and fertile time during which he developed a solid national and international reputation in endocrine pathology. At Tufts, his collaboration with Hubert J. Wolfe would result in a lifelong professional and personal relationship and engender a host of landmark papers in endocrine pathology. In the late seventies, the newly emerging field of immunohistochemistry was particularly appealing to Ron, given its practical and theoretical application to endocrine pathology. Thus began a research and diagnostic service interest that would parallel and enhance his reputation in endocrine pathology. He wrote Diagnostic Immunopathology, which was the "go to" resource in immunopathology for many years. Toward the end of his tenure at Tufts and the NEMC he fittingly received the Distinguished Professor Award from his medical school alma mater.

In 1998, Ron was offered the position of Director of Anatomic Pathology and Vice Chair of Pathology at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in New York City. He accepted the position, which offered the perquisite of being even closer to his beloved New York Metropolitan Opera. At Cornell, in addition to his ongoing research work, he continued to mentor pathology residents and fellows, which has been a special and abiding interest throughout his career.

Over the years, Ron has garnered a host of professional honors: he is a past president of the Endocrine Pathology Society (a companion society of the USCAP); he is the long serving vice president of the Society for Applied Immunohistochemistry; he serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of the AFIP, Tumor Fascicle series and has co-authored the fascicles on Tumors of the Adrenal Gland, Thyroid Gland, and Parathyroid Glands; he served as one of the editors, along with Ricardo Lloyd, Phillip Heitz, and Charis Eng, of the new WHO Classification of Endocrine Tumors; he serves on the editorial boards of 10 major journals, including the American Journal of Surgical Pathology, Laboratory Investigation, Human Pathology, Modern Pathology; and he is co-editor of Diagnostic Molecular Pathology. Not only is Ron an expert in endocrine pathology, he is also a superb general anatomic/surgical pathologist, a fact to which many of his current and former colleagues can attest. Indeed, he is a co-editor of the recent textbook Principles and Practice of Surgical Pathology and Cytopathology. Overall, he has authored or coauthored over 220 papers and written, edited, or coedited 9 books and close to 50 book chapters. In 1999, he was the recipient of the prestigious Fred W. Stewart Award presented by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Ron's longstanding and steady commitment to the IAP and the USCAP for over 30 years is the paradigm of service exemplified in the F.K. Mostofi Award. His spectrum of scholarly contributions to the USCAP include the following: he has been the director or co-director of 3 different short courses; he has served as the co-director of the long course on the Thyroid and Parathyroid with Virginia LiVolsi, another Mostofi Award winner; he has lectured in special courses in molecular biology and immunohistochemistry; he has moderated numerous proffered papers platform sessions, especially in endocrine pathology; he has served as the USCAP representative to the American Registry of Pathology; and he has been a member of the Education Committee, the Publications Committee, and a member of Council. Finally, he has been accorded the highest honor bestowed by the USCAP, serving as its president in 2001-02.

Despite his many and varied accomplishments in the sciences, as well as his genuine love and knowledge of the arts, those who know him would all agree: simply, there is no kinder, nicer guy. For these reasons, Ron DeLellis epitomizes the consummate academician who has contributed outstanding service to the Academy and is a fitting and deserving recipient of the F.K. Mostofi Award. And, by the way, in 2001 he returned to Brown University, where his academic career began with his Honors thesis in Biology. Ron currently serves as Chief of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Lifespan Academic Medical Center and Professor and Associate Chair of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at Brown Medical School. With all due respect to Thomas Wolfe...you can go home again.