Maine Maritime Academy

After graduating from MMA in 1946, I went to sea for a year as 3rd mate on an American Export Lines victory ship. I then entered Bowdoin College, graduated in 1950 and went to Turkey to teach English at Robert College in Istanbul. After three years, I decided to become a doctor like my father, who was the Medical Director of the American Hospital in Istanbul. I was married at the time and had a son, Douglas, who was delivered by his grandfather. After a year of pre-med, I entered Tufts Medical School. During my first year, my wife gave birth to twin boys, David and Richard. We were living in Needham at the time. For my senior year I was on active duty in the Navy as a jg in the Medical Corps. After graduation in June, 1958, I was promoted to Lieutenant and received orders to start my one year rotating internship at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. I then started a four year residency in General Surgery, the last year of which was on the Thoracic Surgery service where I assisted on the first open heart operation at Bethesda. For the next two years I was assigned to the Naval Hospital in Beaufort, South Carolina. During that time I was certified by the American Board of Surgery and became a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. I then applied for and received orders to start a residency in Thoracic Surgery at the St. Albans Naval Hospital in New York. This was one of two naval hospitals certified to train chest surgeons, the other being the San Diego Naval Hospital. St. Albans was the hospital which treated all cases of tuberculosis in navy personnel and their dependents living or stationed in the western half or the US. And so as residents we were trained in a wide variety of general Thoracic Surgery as well as open heart surgery. At the end of two years I took my exams and was certified by the American Board of Thoracic Surgery and became a member of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. At the time the Vietnam War was in full swing, so I decided to volunteer for duty in that arena and received orders to the USS Repose, one of the two hospital ships operating off the coast of Vietnam. I was one of the two Navy thoracic surgeons in Vietnam, the other was aboard the other hospital ship, the USS Sanctuary. It was a long year of treating many kinds of serious battle wounds. I also successfully performed an open heart operation on a Vietnamese soldier. After a year, I returned to St. Albans and then back to Bethesda. I retired after twenty-two years of active duty. For the next twelve years, I worked in the VA; the first seven years as the founding Director of the Agent Orange Projects Office. I’m now happily retired in my native town of Boothbay Harbor.