| On Friday, June 13, 1941, I reported to work at the Button Veterinary Hospital in Tacoma, WA joining brothers, Drs. Reuben and Otis Button, in the general practice characteristic of the time. We responded with veterinary assistance needed by all classes of animals that came to our attention. After two years, Dr. Marvin Anderson joined me in purchasing the practice from the Button brothers, which was phased in over a three-year period. The hospital served as a training unit for several young veterinarians following graduation and service during World War II. During this time, I served as the veterinarian for the McNeil Island Penitentiary. In 1950, with Dr. Bernard Pinckney as my partner, I contracted poliomyelitis, which took me out of active veterinary practice and opened the entire field of veterinary medicine to me. As soon as I was able, I enrolled in graduate studies in the medical school at the University of South Carolina working with the professor of Anatomy, Dr. Melvin H. Kinsely, in microscopic observations of living tissue and studying the changes in health and disease. A call to limited army duty during the Korean War ended my studies. I served as Assistant Station Veterinarian at Fort Gordon, GA., Fort Warden, WA, and at Fort Lewis, WA. I was discharged from active duty from the U.S. Army as a Captain on April 1, 1954. Then came the fulfillment of a dream which was cruising the waters of British Columbia and Southeastern Alaska in my 28 foot yacht with my wife and two children, aged 8 and 6 years old during the summer sailing season. A memory, which lingers still in my mind. In 1955, I began work with the United States Department of Agriculture as a field veterinarian in Kings County, CA, the last county in the U.S. to be accredited in the national tuberculosis eradication program. In 1957, I was appointed as head of the field laboratory in Marin County, CA., evaluating the use of the Whey Agglutination Test as a potential tool to use in the Brucellosis Eradication Program. My reports went directly to Dr. K. Mingle, Chief Staff Veterinarian of Brucellosis Eradication, Washington, DC. I was then chosen to be on his staff as Assistant Chief Veterinarian. For 10 years, I participated in directing the last big push to complete Brucellosis certification in the nation. I was warmly satisfied with the work I accomplished there. A professorship was offered to me in 1968 at the medical school in Charleston, SC where I did my graduate studies. Here, I was chairman of the Department of Comparative Pathology and initiated an in-depth study of heartworm disease in dogs. Assisting me was a very intelligent girl who was gathering information for a science fair project. We defined the nature of the disease and demonstrated the method of control, which over the years, virtually eliminated this dread disease in the canine population. In 1977, I retired from the college and continued to live in Charleston. At the present, I am deeply involved in issues pertaining to senior citizens and am one of the two Silver-Haired Senators from South Carolina in the National Silver-Haired Congress. I also serve as one of two South Carolina State Advocate Representatives in the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. Even in these organizations, my knowledge of biology in all of it aspects has been very useful and fills a void in the political process for the betterment of life in these United States of America. |
