I started at Walter Reed Hospital in 1966. I wanted to keep my commission and joined an Army school in White Plains and went to their meetings. I felt it was safe since attending school would get me the necessary points but it was not a unit that could get called up to active duty.
My problem was summer camp. A doctor that I trained with was stationed at Walter Reed for his two-year tour. I called him up and he arranged for me to do my two weeks there. They were delighted to have me, and I was invited back in the summer of 1967. Then their Chief asked me to be a consultant on a regular basis, coming down four times a year.
I agreed and I still go down there twice a year.
I got several good trips out of them. In 1971, I was going to my second meeting of the Eye Study Club that I will discuss in another chapter. It was to be in Hawaii at the Mauna Kea on the big island. I decided that for that money, our family should go for two weeks.
I got the Army to send me to Oahu to be visiting professor at Tripler Hospital in Honolulu. I got the VIP quarters, which was only a bungalow on Waikiki Beach. We had the beach to ourselves, unlike the hotels on the beach that look like Miami or Coney Island in the summer.
Sally and the kids had a marvelous time while I spent the mornings at Tripler Hospital. You could see the hospital from the beach. It was a pink building up on the hill overlooking Honolulu. It was an older building and had balconies.
One morning while we were having a coffee break on the balcony, a huge black cloud was coming down the valley, or the "Kali'' as the natives call it. I mentioned that my family was going to get a drenching while they are on the beach. My host corrected me. He said it never rains on the beach. The Kali will suck up the rain. And he was right.
Another day that I was lecturing, they invited the town doctors. After the lecture, a female ophthalmologist came over to me and complimented me on my lecture. She gave me a box marked pineapples and said it was for me. I thanked her, but then I wondered what I was going to do with pineapples. I considered throwing them away but was afraid she might see me. I brought it back and found out that it was not pineapples at all. It contained 12 jars of macadamia nuts, which are quite tasty and very expensive. Thank goodness, I did not throw them out. Needless to say those nuts never made it back home. I later found out she owned a macadamia nut factory.
We took two afternoon trips to Hanauma Bay, a state park on the southeast coast of Oahu that has an old volcano. It acts as a bathtub for thousands of fish and probably is the best place to go snorkeling.
It was on this trip that I started to give Sally a gold charm for each place we traveled to. They were not only a charm about the place but something unique. This time, it was a map of Oahu with a diamond and a pearl set on the map for Pearl Harbor and Diamond Head.
When we went to Tahiti years later, I got a small thatch hut that was to remind us of those huts with the see-through floors. When I got home, I had a diamond put on the bottom to mimic that feature. I will tell you more about trips to the Mauna Kea in the chapter on the Eye Study Club.
Trips to D.C.
Meanwhile, my trips to Walter Reed continued. The D.C. trips got to be longer because of the increasing casualties from Vietnam. Also during this time, the Army was building a new Walter Reed. The old eye department was in an old-style Army barracks right next to where they were digging. I thought they had lost their way. They literally dug a hole for a year.
The new Walter Reed was supposed to work even if there were an attack on Washington. I am not sure, but I believe there are six or more floors underground with supplies for a year.
They put the operating rooms at ground level with a garden over them in the center of the building. But there was one small problem. It leaked.
They also installed a rail system for delivering everything from laundry to food and drugs. They built an extra 6-foot floor between each floor to accommodate the railroad system. It was computerized, so it would go not only to the proper floor but also to the proper nurses’ station.
I was given a tour just before it was opened. Several months later when I was giving ward rounds, I could see several of these wagons still being pushed by the same people who did it before. The system never worked.
I also learned how Washington works. The Ophthalmology Chief, Colonel Budd Appleton, was frequently asked to testify at different state commissions that were considering letting optometrists dispense medicines and allow some of them to do laser therapy. The reasons for asking him was to testify that the Army had optometrists treating patients by themselves. Colonel Appleton said he had optometrists but they were not treating patients and they were under the supervision of an MD.
The Optometric Society did not like him. They got in touch with one of their former members who was on the appropriations committee for the Armed Forces. He got in touch with 4 stars and Colonel Appleton was retired immediately. All of us consultants sent letters in his behalf and told members of Congress what we had seen as consultants. It didn't help. It is like the trial lawyers and their hold on Congress.
My Favorite Dive Bar
The years rolled on, and late in the '80s, Walter Reed had a dinner for me and made me an Honorary Alumni. One of the things I liked about going to Walter Reed was a special Irish singing bar in a bad section of town. The place was called Matt Kane’s Bit O'Ireland. On the door it said, be good or be gone.
The bar was terrible looking. It was a real dive. You had to go upstairs where the singing was. They not only sang all the Irish songs I grew up with but lots of old Irish rebel songs. I wondered if any of the band or singers had passports. I frequently closed the place at 2 a.m. and got a cab back to my hotel. I was lucky at that hour that I wasn’t mugged.
The Army would come for me at 5 a.m. because there were so many people to see because of Vietnam. They asked me how was the trip down from New York. The flight was only 45 minutes, I didn’t tell them I was in an Irish bar.
When you rode in the shuttle in the early days, they were old planes and you were stuffed into the seats. I usually did not talk to my fellow passengers. However, on one occasion I did talk to the man next to me. He had on a tie clasp that looked like the ring that was on soda and beer cans to open them. I asked him where he got it. He said he worked for Continental Can.
He gave me one that was in sterling silver, which was like all the company officers wear. I thanked him and took his card to send him a note. But I lost it, so I never thanked him properly. Then Continental Can went to different tops that could not be thrown away because it was considered an environmental problem.
On one of the trips to D.C., Sally came with me. It was when Gerald Ford was President. The South Sea pirates had taken one of our merchant ships. That day, Ford sent in the Marines and they took the ship back. That night, I took Sally to Matt Kane’s since Sally had heard so much about it. The place was rocking. There were a lot of young Marines from Quantico. They were on the tables singing the Marine Hymn and all sorts of patriotic songs. Sally got up with them and was on her chair. We enjoyed it, but Sally agreed that if I kept going there, I would eventually get mugged.
Standing Invitation
Another wonderful thing happened at Walter Reed. I took care of the Commandant of the Marine Corps on two occasions and we became friendly. I ended up having a standing invitation to the evening retreat ceremony throughout the summer that was held on Fridays at the Marine barracks at Eighth and Avenue I. It was a bad area, but when we had the car with us, I got permission to park it a block away at the Navy yard.
It was a wonderful parade with the drill team and the march-by of a company in dress uniforms and with the Marine band and the mascot Chesty. The evening started off with a concert by the band. Since the 9/11 attacks, I could not use the Navy yard and we did not want to go to it and have to walk through the neighborhood.
One day after an early visit to Reed, I went to the Navy yard to see the Marine museum. The cab let me off at the fancy front gate. I got to the gate and started to enter and the Navy guard stopped me. He said I could not use the gate since it was the Admiral’s gate. I did not appreciate that, particularly since there was no Admiral around and I did not think I would damage the gate by walking through it. The guard was very insistent about my not using it. I was wearing my usual blue jacket with brass buttons. I told him I looked like an Admiral and asked him why I couldn’t go through. He had no sense of humor. He still said no. I got in at the gate a block away.
In the '70s, Walter Reed had a conference that was attended by many in the area and alumni of Walter Reed. I usually gave a paper. The conference lasted for two days. At one of the opening meetings, Colonel Appleton started the meeting by giving the details of the cocktail party and dinner the first night. He said that for military men, the time was 18-hundred hours. For civilians, it was 6 p.m. For Colonels and above, it was when the large hand of their Mickey Mouse watches was at the bottom and the small hand was straight up.
Religious Demonstrators
I used to try to get a morning lecture space and then quietly sneak out. One day, I headed out and was going to the Air and Space Museum on the Mall. I got off the subway at the Smithsonian station. When I got upstairs, I was in the middle of a large rally of religious demonstrators.
At that point, one of the speakers said they were going to march to the Capitol. They had permission for 1,000, so only those who had parade tickets should line up on the road. At that moment, one of the participants who was carrying a cross with a wheel on the bottom got up and grabbed me. “Come with me, brother,'' he said.
I thought what might happen if one of the newspapers published our picture. How could I explain this to the Surgeon General? I’m sure God would not have been too thrilled either.
I did not go with him. I then went to the Air and Space Museum. They had a cafeteria there, so I got some lunch and sat down at a table for two. Then one of the demonstrators who did not have a parade ticket sat down opposite me with his lunch. He was in his 50s with a string of beads over a flowery-type southwestern shirt. He then started to tell me about his religious trip over D.C. The Devil took him on the same tour that the Devil gave The Lord as mentioned in Luke 21.
I paid for my lunch, and there was no entertainment charge. I think he was a friend of my other friend with the cross. I know I am not the friendliest person in town, but these characters seem to be attracted to me like bees to honey.
A Special Patient
There is one building that was not taken down when the new Walter Reed was built. The original building was left standing because the Army Surgeon General did not want his rose garden touched. The top floor of that building was fitted out for very special people. This was like the President or foreign VIP guests. Congressmen or even four-stars in the military did not get in.
Before I was at Reed, a special patient arrived as an acute case on the Fourth of July. This is usually a bad day in any university hospital. The old resident staff has gone and the new staff has just arrived. If they have arrived, they are an intern who had just graduated from medical school.
This time, it was 5-stars Douglas MacArthur with a bowel obstruction. He was put in those special quarters, and they had to put together a 24-hour staff of nurses, food supply, cleaning and all the other staff. The intern was the only other one around, and he went ahead and put a Levine tube in the General.
The attending was taking his call at Rehoboth Beach. It was a usual practice but not satisfactory at that time. They now take call on post.
In the '80s, this facility was opened for the mother of a Persian Gulf ruler. She was a diabetic with all sorts of complications. She had lost a leg, had severe coronary disease and had a third nerve palsy.
They always like to see the local professor, so they took me over to see her. I mentioned that in the old days, I would get an overseas trip to see these people. Now I don’t get a trip and no extra money. Her entire family came over and took over an entire floor of the Willard Hotel. Every day, they would come in several limousines to see her. I’m sure we picked up the tab. After I talked with the family, I discussed the case with the residents. They asked me what to do. This was my December trip. I suggested they ship her home before she dies on their watch. I heard later that everyone suggested she go home. She died the following March. It pays to be a lucky doctor as well as good.