Larry Dee, D.V.M, and his wife, Rita Dee, created a Professorship, in honor of retired faculty member, Dr. Michael Schaer, in Small Animal Emergency and Critical Care Medicine, which will provide perpetual support for a clinical faculty member who will be associated with the department of small animal clinical sciences and will work with the emergency and critical care service at UF’s Small Animal Hospital.

Larry Dee comes from a family with a huge legacy in veterinary medicine in Florida. His late father, Clarence Dee, D.V.M., served on the state’s Board of Veterinary Medicine for more than 20 years, and helped support efforts to build the state’s only veterinary college in the 1970s.

Clarence Dee and his brother-in-law founded the highly successful Hollywood Animal Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, where Larry Dee and two of his brothers, who also became veterinarians, worked for many years; one brother continues to practice there. All the Dee brothers attended veterinary school at Auburn University, as UF’s veterinary school did not exist at the time.