The piano that still plays
The grand piano in Ann Biggs’ living room was never just furniture. It was a centerpiece.
For nearly half a century, “Morning Has Broken” drifted through the house — the song her husband, Glenn Biggs, loved most, and the soundtrack of a life they built together. Glenn was a San Antonio banker, civic leader and philanthropist whose vision helped shape how Texas advances brain health today.
“That was his favorite song,” said Ann, 92. “It was always the first thing he wanted me to play. I still wake up at night and hear it in my mind, even now.”
Today, the Biggs’ piano — a gleaming Chickering grand — sits inside the UT Health San Antonio Center for Brain Health, a $100 million facility opening in December, where science, patient care, music and community share the same space.
Glenn died of Alzheimer’s in 2015. When the time felt right, Ann donated the piano to bring comfort to others.
“Music is one of the last things to go,” she said. “I saw it firsthand.”
When Glenn was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she said, the disease advanced faster than either of them expected. Still, the signs were subtle enough that he could disguise them.
“His neurologist said he was a type A personality, and they can cover it up for a long time,” Ann recalled. “And I think he did.”
As the conversations grew shorter and the silences longer, music endured. In his final months at a San Antonio memory-care center, Ann often sat at the community piano. What happened next surprised her.
“Patients there who never spoke would sing along with the old hymns,” she said. “They remembered the words. It was remarkable.”
Scientists now understand what she witnessed. While Alzheimer’s can blur names and faces, the neural pathways that process rhythm and melody often remain intact.
“Music activates parts of the brain that connect emotion, memory and movement,” said Sudha Seshadri, MD, founding director of the Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases at UT Health San Antonio. “Even when language begins to fade, rhythm finds its way through. A familiar song can bring someone back, not just to a memory, but to themselves.”
A conversation that sparked a movement
Long before there was a building, there was a conversation.
In 2014, after learning there were few options for comprehensive Alzheimer’s care in South Texas, Glenn called William L. Henrich, MD, MACP, then president of UT Health San Antonio, and asked to meet.
“There was nowhere to go,” Ann recalled. “His doctor told us there was nothing more they could do. That’s when Glenn said, ‘We’ve got to do better than this.’”
A few days later, she drove him to UT San Antonio’s Health Science Center campus and waited in the car while the two met. When he returned, Glenn told her, “I think I touched a nerve.”
That conversation planted the seed for what would become the nationally leading Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases and, a decade later, the new home for integrated research, care and teaching at the UT Health San Antonio Center for Brain Health.
When Henrich died in 2024, the impact of his partnership with Glenn was already evident across South Texas — not in plaques but in programs, research and patients whose lives are changing because of them.
“Dr. Henrich believed, as Glenn did, that if something needs to be done, you don’t ask why. You find a way to make it happen,” said Seshadri. “That spirit continues to guide every discovery and every patient we reach.”
It was a philosophy Glenn had lived long before the institute bore his name. Decades earlier, he persuaded the U.S. interior secretary to turn a rugged stretch of West Texas into Guadalupe Mountains National Park, a project that he realized in three years.
“He didn’t ask how,” Ann said. “He just made it happen.”
A few weeks ago, her son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughters climbed to the park’s summit, the highest point in Texas. Years earlier, when her sons made the same hike, a bald eagle, Glenn’s favorite bird, had circled overhead. This time, they saw butterflies.
“They felt like he was with them,” she said softly. “And I believe he was.”
Carrying a legacy forward
Francisco G. Cigarroa, MD, senior executive vice president for health affairs and health system at UT Health San Antonio, said the work ahead reflects not only the promise of science, but the responsibility to the region it serves.
Texas is home to more than 400,000 people living with Alzheimer’s disease, a number projected to rise by 22% in the next decade. And San Antonio sits at the heart of one of the state’s fastest-growing aging populations.
“In South Texas, we face some of the highest rates of Alzheimer’s and dementia in the nation, yet we also stand at the forefront of discovery and progress,” Cigarroa said. “Through the Biggs Institute, the Center for Brain Health and the opportunity to advance research through the Dementia Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (DPRIT), our mission is clear. We strive to transform groundbreaking research into prevention, scientific understanding into compassionate care, and knowledge into hope for the patients and families we serve.”
DPRIT was approved by Texas voters this week through Proposition 14, a state constitutional amendment that established a $3 billion state fund to accelerate research, treatment and prevention of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
Turning science into hope
Under Seshadri's leadership, the Biggs Institute has become a hub for early-diagnosis research and clinical trials. For her, the Center for Brain Health is more than a milestone. It's a promise realized.
“We want to find cures, but we also want to find opportunities for people to live their best lives, to keep bringing their unique personality, skill and knowledge,” she said. “The Center for Brain Health is designed with that same philosophy: that medicine must care for the whole person. Mind. Body. Spirit.”
Rising at the corner of Floyd Curl and Charles Katz drives, the center brings together specialists in Alzheimer’s, dementia, Parkinson’s disease and stroke. The team includes neurologists, psychiatrists, art and music therapists, and researchers working side by side.
With 91 rooms for exams, testing and treatment, along with 12 infusion chairs, the center’s scientific heart is one of Texas’s first Siemens Magnetom 7-Tesla TerraX scanners, capable of capturing the brain in extraordinary detail.
“That MRI lets us see changes we couldn’t detect before,” Seshadri said. “It means catching the disease earlier, when we can still make a difference.”
The Center for Brain Health will also be one of a few sites in Texas offering new disease-modifying therapies.
“Three years ago, the FDA advisory panel voted to approve lecanemab, a new infusion therapy that removes amyloid from the brain, the toxic protein that damages neurons and helps slow the disease,” Seshadri said. “I learned of the approval on Glenn’s birthday. It felt like a gift. We now have more than 120 patients receiving these infusions.”
The formal approval followed weeks later, on July 6, 2023.
The therapy, she explained, is not a cure but a start. It’s also a way to buy patients and families precious time. “We call these medicines disease-modifying, not symptomatic,” she said. “Before, we could make memory a little better. Now, we can actually change what’s happening in the brain.”
Soon, those infusions will be offered in rooms designed to feel more like living spaces than clinics.
“I imagine someone getting their infusion while a volunteer plays the piano in the next room,” Seshadri said. “That’s what makes the new center different.”
For Ann, that connection is deeply personal, a reflection of the life and love that music once carried through her home. Her beloved piano now sits in the center’s community room, a room named after her. Its keys wait for anyone moved to play.
“It reminds us that if you can bring out joy in a person, you help keep their brain working longer,” Seshadri said. “Music and art aren’t extras. They’re medicine in their own way.”
When the healer becomes the patient
A retired orthopaedic surgeon puts his trust in a former colleague to address his chronic back pain
John Toohey, MD, spent decades repairing spines and restoring hope.
As a retired orthopaedic surgeon and former assistant dean in the Department of Graduate Medical Education at UT Health San Antonio, Toohey guided countless patients through the maze of chronic back pain, treating them with precision and compassion.
But at age 74 — when spinal stenosis left him with his own excruciating pain and few options — the healer became the inaugural patient at the newly opened UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty and Research Hospital.
“You know how it feels when you hit your funny bone?” Toohey asked. “The pain was so bad. I couldn’t do anything. I’m an avid golfer, but I couldn’t play anymore. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t hike. I used to bike all the time, but I couldn’t even do that.”
For years, Toohey fought to keep his symptoms under control. Anti-inflammatory medications, physical therapy and a regimen of epidural steroid injections provided temporary relief. But by last summer, even the injections couldn’t keep him on the golf course.
“I had tried everything,” he said. “For someone who was relatively fit, I had become a slug.”
Making the call for help
The surgeon who had spent his life mending others knew it was his turn to seek help. He placed his trust in the people and institution he believed in most.
“I made an appointment at The Spine Center,” he recalled. “I showed up at the office with my MRI and said, ‘I need surgery. Let’s get on with it.’”
That office is led by Christopher Chaput, MD, who worked alongside Toohey years earlier and now serves as chair of the Department of Orthopaedics at UT Health San Antonio’s new hospital. Chaput is also the director of The Spine Center located at the UT Health Medical Arts and Research Center.
“I was really surprised when I showed up to my clinic a few months ago and my first patient of the day was my former spine partner here at UT Health San Antonio,” Chaput said. “He didn’t warn me that he was coming back to see me about his back.”
For Toohey, the decision to turn to Chaput was more than just familiarity. It was about confidence. He knew the rigorous standards required to be a truly skilled spine surgeon, and Chaput had earned that distinction.
“A good spine surgeon doesn’t jump to surgery. They exhaust conservative treatments first and recognize that surgery isn’t always the answer,” Toohey said. “You have to assess the patient as a whole and determine what’s really best for them. There are plenty of cases where surgery isn’t the right option.”
So, when Chaput proposed the same surgical approach Toohey had championed for years, Toohey immediately knew he had found the right surgeon.
“I thought, ‘That’s good news. Now I don’t have to walk him through the surgery in the [operating room],’” he said, laughing. “I’ve been at this long enough to know exactly what needed to be done.”
A milestone for UT Health San Antonio
Toohey’s procedure, a two-level lumbar decompression and fusion, is routine in spine care. But for Robert Quinn, MD, chair of the Department of Orthopaedics at UT Health San Antonio and a hospital board member who hired both surgeons, the surgery marked a significant milestone.
“The first case performed at [the new hospital] — a surgery by Dr. Chaput on Dr. Toohey — really speaks to the strength of our team and the caliber of care we provide,” Quinn said. “Having John place his trust in Chris shows just how much confidence we have in our physicians, and it’s a testament to the level of expertise that exists here.”
Facing the unknown
Like any patient, Toohey was apprehensive before surgery.
“I know all too well what can go wrong. Believe me, I’ve had things happen that are out of your control,” he said, his wife Myrna by his side. “But you have to have faith in people and trust that the institution has good doctors. I was apprehensive, but I wasn’t losing sleep over it. The only thing keeping me up at night was the pain in my back.”
For Chaput, Toohey’s confidence was both an honor and a challenge.
“I wake up every day thinking about how we can improve care,” Chaput said. “With the new hospital, we have the opportunity to continue setting a new standard for South Texas.”
Chaput knows firsthand how the new hospital’s mission extends beyond technological advancements. At its core, he said, are the people — their skill, dedication, compassion and teamwork.
“As a surgeon, there’s only so much I can do with my own two hands,” Chaput said. “What many patients don’t realize is how crucial the team behind those hands really is. I’ve come to know the nursing and anesthesia teams well, and their expertise gives me the confidence to honor the trust my patients place in me.”
Jeff Flowers, MBA, FACHE, chief executive officer of the hospital, agreed.
“Our hospital’s mission is rooted in hope and healing, but it’s our core values — service, integrity and teamwork — that set us apart,” he said. “By fostering a culture of collaboration across every discipline, it ensures every decision is made in the best interest of our patients and their families. It’s not just what we do, it’s who we are.”
A full-circle moment
The day of the surgery, Dec. 10, was full of personal meaning. In addition to being the first patient at the new hospital, Toohey was returning to an institution that had been central to his professional journey for decades.
Today, as Toohey slowly regains his strength and returns to his daily life, he also reflects on the trajectory of his career. He said his work as a surgeon and later as an assistant dean in the Department of Graduate Medical Education at UT Health San Antonio defined him. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Toohey decided it was time to retire.
It wasn’t an easy decision for someone who admits to being a workaholic.
“I loved my job. I couldn’t get enough of it,” he said. But the demands of a long career eventually caught up with him. To make his retirement final, Toohey made a bold move: On July 1, 2024, he let his medical license expire. “I forced myself to quit,” he said.
From treating others to receiving treatment himself, the experience deepened Toohey’s appreciation for the patients he’s spent a lifetime serving — and for the skilled hands of those who now stand in his place. It also strengthened his pride in UT Health San Antonio.
“From the minute I walked through the front door of the new hospital right before surgery, I was impressed,” he said. “Especially in this era of electronic everything, I was moved by the genuine human interest in me as a patient by everybody I encountered.”
After his successful spinal stenosis surgery, Toohey now expects to spend four to six months gradually recovering. He’s motivated by what it will allow him to reclaim: his independence and his beloved game of golf.
“My body isn’t what it used to be. Of course, it never is at my age,” he said with a smile. “Golf is my passion, my addiction. I’m looking forward to playing again.”