Call it the “Case of the Missing Class Photo.”

Medical students, faculty and staff members walk daily under the gaze of former students, peering down at them from class photos lining the hallways of Scott Hall. But on the first-floor hallway leading to the cafeteria, only a framed, handwritten list of students represented the Class of 1907. Why that photo was missing, and where it might be located, remained a mystery for decades.

Thanks to a resident alum and clinical faculty member, the photo of the Class of 1907 will now take its rightful place in those hallways.

James Sunstrum, M.D., grew up in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. He attended medical school in Canada, and performed a residency with the Wayne State University School of Medicine in 1984. He now serves as chief of Infectious Disease at Oakwood Hospital in Dearborn, and is a clinical associate professor with the School of Medicine.

Dr. Sunstrum, without realizing it at the time, actually had a connection with a deceased member of the Class of 1907, William Percy Johns, M.D. While Dr. Johns was originally from Michigan, he practiced a lifetime of medicine in Canada, in the very area Dr. Sunstrum was familiar with. And Dr. Johns left a unique legacy that allowed Dr. Sunstrum to track down the missing class photo.

Dr. Sunstrum settled in Dearborn in 1983 after his marriage to a Michigan woman. After they married, he took his wife to his home town to show her where he grew up. That area is home to the Western Development Museum in Saskatoon. The museum contains replicas of shops and artifacts of the pioneering settlements in the area, including an early Plains physician office that once belonged to Dr. Johns.

“I had been to the museum a number of times,” Dr. Sunstrum said. “But for some reason, this time I took a closer look at the doctor’s degree hanging on the wall. He was a graduate of the Detroit Medical College, Class of 1907.”

Hanging near the diploma was a class photo – the missing photo.

Dr. Johns, said Dr. Sunstrum, was from Michigan and took his medical degree from the School of Medicine’s forerunner, the Detroit Medical College. After graduation, Dr. Johns worked two years as a railroad physician in British Columbia. He moved in 1912 to Viscount, Saskatchewan (population 350), and remained in practice there until the 1960s. He was named Citizen of the Year for the province of Saskatchewan in 1971, four years before his death.

How did a Michigan doctor end up so far from home? Dr. Sunstrum explained that in those days, small provincial and frontier towns often pooled their resources to “hire” a doctor to settle in their regions, providing a modest living and often a home.

Dr. Sunstrum convinced the curator of the museum to remove the class photo from its original frame and shoot a high-quality digital copy. He then had a printer produce a large-scale reproduction from the file. The curator also sent a photo of the school faculty taken at that same year. In addition, the curator put Dr. Sunstrum in touch with Dr. Johns’ son, a farmer in the Viscount area, and his grandson, who also lives there. He spent about 90 minutes with them, learning more about Dr. Johns’ life.

In May, Dr. Sunstrum was invited to join the Detroit Medical Academy, a group of physicians who meet monthly to discuss medicine and for camaraderie. New members are asked to give a presentation, and when Dr. Sunstrum arrived to give his talk, he asked whether Interim Dean Valerie Parisi, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., would remain for the full meeting. Later that evening, Dr. Sunstrum stood up to present “Westward Ho: William Percy Jones, M.D., Wayne University Class of 1907” to the group.

“I just knew it when he began speaking,” Dean Parisi said. “I leaned over and told Dr. (Robert) Sokol, ‘He has the missing class photo from 1907,’ and he had it with him and presented it to us! It was very exciting.

“I knew we were missing the Class of 1907 because I always enjoy looking at the class photos in our hallways,” she added. “It’s just so wonderful to finally have this treasure come back home where it belongs.”

The photo will be framed and will replace the handwritten list that has hung in the first-floor hallway of Scott Hall.