Charles Howell Jr.'s patients might pass him in the street and never recognize the pediatric surgeon who, years before, left his bed in the middle of the night to perform life-saving surgery on them.

They might, however, recognize the name of Dr. Howell's son - rising golf star Charles Howell III (Stats | Bio) , of Augusta.

Now the son is trying to make sure his father gets a little recognition.

Mr. Howell presented an $80,000 check Sunday to the Medical College of Georgia to help start an endowed chair in pediatric surgery in honor of his father, who is the chief of pediatric surgery.

In doing so, the 2001 PGA Rookie of the Year donated 80 percent of his winnings from the 2003 PGA Tour's President's Cup to a cause close to his heart.

"Obviously, I'm extremely proud of the hospital here. Not only has it afforded me the opportunity to play golf, but it has also afforded my dad time off from work to come see me play," he said at Sunday's ceremony. "I know my dad's job is a lot more important than mine. He's trying to save lives. I'm trying to save strokes."

With tears welling up in his eyes, Dr. Howell told the crowd he was very proud of his son.

"If I had interns as dedicated to medicine as he is to golf, I would have some awesome physicians," he said. "His profession was always golf."

But, Dr. Howell said, as a child his boy also preferred to tag along with him at work learning what physicians do.

"I always knew somehow he'd help the children at the hospital, and now he has," Dr. Howell said.

Pediatric surgery is a particularly demanding field. Dr. Howell or his partner, Dr. Robyn Hatley, is constantly on call. An emergency call could be a child born with a life-threatening hole in his intestine or an esophagus that doesn't reach the stomach.

With some newborns, "as soon as you make the diagnosis, you go straight to the operating room," Dr. Howell said. It requires a depth of experience and skill and is the reason why pediatric surgery was made a specialty years ago.

Or it could be trauma.

"Every car wreck that has a child in it, every bicycle wreck, every ATV wreck, every kid that falls out of a building, or falls out of a tree, everyone that gets hurt (12 years old and younger), we see them first," Dr. Howell said.

It will take a while to raise the roughly $500,000 required to create the endowed chair. But Dr. Howell is looking beyond that.

"It may never even be for me," he said. "It may be that it's something that in perpetuity just helps to assure that pediatric surgery will always have a presence in the (MCG) Children's Medical Center."

Reach Dena Levitz or Tom Corwin at (706) 724-0851.