William Douglas, MD

Autobiography

Received 16 May 1989

as 11 type-written pages, pencil-edited, apparently from dictation

to Wyckliffe Hoffler, MD, then Historian for

Space Medicine Branch and Society of NASA Flight Surgeons of AsMA

I was born September 5, 1922. I guess it is customary to one’s background and ancestry of both my parents. Both of my parents lived in Estancia, New Mexico, having come from opposite sides of the country. My father lived with his father around the turn of the century. They came in a box car with few possessions, some livestock, and a bit of furniture, leaving my grandmother and my father’s brother back in Clay Center, Kansas. My grandfather, Silas Douglas, farmed a piece of land that had been abandoned. My father, Lou Douglas, dug a hole into the side of a dirt bank and built a little house on the outside of the cave. They dug a well, erected a windmill, and began to build a conventional home at that time. They sent for my grandmother whose name was Vina Trentland Douglas and my Uncle whose name was Corte Ode Douglas.

My father and his family owned a combination farm and ranch in this little Mexican community. My grandmother taught school in the combined Elementary/High School in Estancia.

My mother was born in Mississippi in the 1920’s [sic]. She elected to come to Estancia where she had an Aunt, Fannie Wiggins, who was married to Doctor Jim Wiggins, the only doctor in the area. My mother decided to come west to teach school at the same school where my grandmother Douglas was teaching and went to live with her Aunt Fannie Wiggins. Quite obviously I guess, Maud Wiese Douglas (my mother0 met Leo Arthur Douglas, my father. They married in 1921 (I think) and then I was born September 5, 1922.

We lived for only a short time in Estancia and my father, who worked in the bank there, was given an opportunity at least to sell insurance, but he had to go some place on the East Coast, Virginia or North Carolina—I don’t remember exactly where—and took some training with his company and then eventually changed companies, I believe, and came to El Paso, Texas in 1928 (might have been 1927) and they lived there for the rest of their lives with exception of a three-year sojourn in Phoenix, Arizona, where I went to High School.

My earliest memories are those of attending Dudly Elementary School in El Paso. At that time in the state of Texas there were only seven grades in elementary school. After graduation from elementary school, I then went to just one semester of high school at El Paso High School and then my father was transferred to Phoenix to open an office for Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company and there I went the rest of my years of high school, graduating in 1939. I then went to college first at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque in 1939. After graduation my parents returned to El Paso and then I went on up to Albuquerque to attend school. I went there for possibly three semesters and then came to El Paso to attend the Texas College of Mines and Metalogy. It has since gone through several different name changes and now is known as the University of Texas at El Paso or more familiarly known as UTEL.

I have been asked on occasion it I knew what motivated me to attend medical school and become a physician and I really can’t say. I was exposed at a very early age by my uncle, Doctor Jim Wiggins, who incidentally delivered me in a little adobe house that my parents owned in Estancia, New Mexico. We used to go back and visit in the summertime and I saw what the life of a country doctor was like. I admired my uncle a great deal and [was] found in him perhaps something to [do] with my decision; but, even in elementary school, I was interested in biological sciences.

My parents gave me a little microscope which I still own (incidentally a little Bausch and Lomb NHM microscope), and I used it to make hay infusions and look at the little paramecia and the other protozoa that grew in the hay infusion and look at mosquito mouth parts or whatever I could look at I did and enjoyed.

On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was bombed and World War II started. I was in pre-medicine at the Texas College of Mines and Metalogy. In February of 1942, a group of Army Air Corps officers came to the College of Mines; there was an assembly of all the male students and these Army Air Corps officers invited those of us who wanted to fly, those of us who were in good physical condition and invited us to join the Army Air Corps Reserve and certainly led us to believer that we would be deferred until we graduated from college because, as they said, the Army wanted college graduates for pilots. So a great many of us joined up and it was a glorious day. We were quite proud to serve our country and we continued on in pre-medicine and then approximately a year later our deferments were cancelled and we were called to active duty and headed for Shepard Field in Wichita Falls, Texas. Let’s make it quite clear that none of us objected to [the call] and that none of us felt that we had been misled by those Army Pilots that came the year before. The war was in its second or third year and we all felt a little guilty of staying in school because we all had friends who had gone ahead and proceeded to fight the war. SO we were not disturbed about the cancellation of the deferment and we rather eagerly, I think, proceeded on to serve our country.

Sometime before our deferments had been cancelled I had sent my application to the University of Texas and I think to Vanderbilt Medical School and had been accepted at both. The acceptance at the Universities, I think, was for the classes beginning on September, 1945, so I more or less forgot about it and went on to Basic Training at Shepard Field as it was known then and from there we went to College Training Detachment in Union University, Jackson, Tennessee; that was for several weeks and it was my first introduction to flying. They gave us ten hours of drill instruction and we were not allowed to solo. We also had two hours of instruction in little Piper Cub light aircraft in Jackson, Tennessee, then on to Classification Center at San Antonio, Texas, and I remained there at San Antonio which is now called Lackland Air Force Base and I remained there for my pre-flight training.

I did not thing much about it and turned it into the Orderly Room because some place in my Basic Training they told me if we had any valuable documents [to] take them down to the Orderly Room where they would be put in our 201 file and would stay in safe keeping there until the war was over. Well, I went on to Quaro, Texas, for my primary training and had six or eight hours (I guess) of primary training when I was called into the commander’s office and I could tell he was a little put out with me. He said that he had been informed from Eighth Quary at Headquarters that I had bee accepted to Medical School and that he was giving me the option of either continuing pilot training or going on to attend Medical School. Well, this caused a great dilemma in my mind so I went back to barracks and talked to my friends, called my parents, and the Chaplain that I had known in San Antonio and asked them how they felt. My friends finally convinced me that they had apparently observed my progress in flight training and figured that as one of them put it, “I would rather have you taking care of me when I get pulled out of a crash than having you fly on my wind,” and so that sort of convinced me that maybe I had better go on to medical school. The next day I went in to the Commander’s; office and told him that I had elected to go on to Medical School and this disturbed him a great deal. Here is an interesting observation: here is a man who (I never saw again) I would surmise that this man is stuck out in Quaro, Texas, training a bunch of dumb cadets when he would much rather be out fighting in the war. He could not understand why anybody did not want to go out and fight in the war. H, in retrospect, I think quite understandably, was upset with me and said, “If that’s the way you fell about it get off the base before the sun goes down,” and I did.

I went to some place in Oklahoma where there was sort of a remount station (I guess) they called it in the Old West Calvary where they kept us until they could figure out what to do with us. They sent me to Aston University in Saint Louis, Missouri, for some reason or another. They felt I needed some more organic chemistry and a couple of other subjects so I spent the winter of (I guess) 1943 there. In 1944, I spent time at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, taking some more courses in organic chemistry, physics, physiology and I don’t remember what else. I then went down to Brook General Hospital at Fort Sam Houston where I was a bed pan Commando, as they called us in those days (ward boy) for several months and then went on to the University of Texas at Galveston in the summer of 1944. All this was called the Army Specialized Training Program or (ASTP). We wore uniforms, had formation before class, afternoon formations where we marched and did all the other close order drill type things and we were issued our clothing. It was kind of nice they paid our tuition, gave us our books, instruments (except we had to buy our own microscopes). They gave us hemostat meters, stethoscopes, segonometers [sic] and all those other things. We continued on in school and w had to wear uniforms; it was work time so we could not get out of it. The only excuse for not being in uniform was if you were engaged in sports of at the beach.

Speaking of the beach, this is the time to tell of the meting of the lady who was to become my wife which probably I guess that’s the best thing that ever happened to me.

I was sitting around in my fraternity house (my fraternity was New Segmond, Medical Fraternity—by the way, I forgot to say also that at the University of New Mexico, all those many years ago I joined the Segmond Fraternity). One Sunday afternoon a friend of mine and his date came by and asked if I would like to get a date and go to the beach with them. I replied that I didn’t know anybody to get a date with, whereupon my friend’s date said she could arrange for me to have date with any girl in the student nursing curriculum at the University. She knew them all and all I had to do was to tell her which one I wanted to date and she would call her and arrange for us to go to the beach together. I went to the Year Book I guess and went through it and saw a picture of a lovely brunette and asked her to see if she could get me a date with that girl and we looked at the bottom of the page and her name was Mary Wade McRoy and she was able to get me a date with McRoy. Mc and I went to the beach that afternoon. Neither one of us had ever dated another person before. We were married in Galveston on August 17, 1946, according to the engraved inscription inside my wedding ring. Just less than a month ago now we celebrated our thirty-eighth wedding anniversary. [This dates Dr. Douglas’s writing of his autobiography at September, 1984.]

So I graduated from Medical School in February of 1948 and took my internship at Wayne County General Hospital and Infirmary, Eluise, Michigan. About a month after we arrived in Detroit, my son Michael Wade Douglas was born on March 19, 1948, and it was a glorious day for us. My internship continued from March 1, 1949-June-1950. During that sixteen months I felt that I had some obligation to pay back to the Air Force with their putting me through Medical School and most of my internship. Incidentally, I forgot to say that I was discharged from the Army in the Specialized Training Program in 1946 because the war was over and everyone was getting out. If you had thirty-six points—you got points for a variety of things, certainly one point for every month of State Side Duty. I had thirty-six months of State Side Duty so I was discharged in February of 1946 after three years of Active Duty. To continue, after internship, I decided to pay back some of that time to the Army. I wrote a letter to the Surgeon General of the Army and said that I wanted to join. I had a covote [sic], I wanted to be assigned to the Air Corps, so I got a prompt letter back saying enclosed is your application blank at the top—write the Air Corps. All of which I did, but before I had a chance to turn them in my internship was completed. I had been accepted for residency in internal medicine at Methodist Hospital in Houston. I wrote the Methodist and said that I was going to join the Army and that I would like to be deferred there. I would come back in a couple of years and continue my residency.

After my internship Mary Wade and I drove down to San Antonio because I had heard of this thing called the School of Aviation Medicine and I went there and talked to them about all the different programs offered there. I thought that since they so desperately needed physicians at the time I would use what power was available to me for Active Duty Commission.

I put a cover letter with it and said my acceptance to this commission is contingent upon my assignment to them which was called Basic Course to Aviation Medicine at the School of Aviation Medicine, Randolf Air Force Base, Texas, which began in September of 1949. Well, I didn’t think I would have a chance at that but I guess they were really desperate because I was accepted into the course. The class started on a Monday as I recall and the Friday before I had not heard anything, so I drafted a telegram which I intended to send on Sunday morning arriving in Washington on that Monday. The telegram said since I obviously can’t make it to that class I hereby withdraw my application to the commission. Well Saturday came and the telegram had arrived and it said that I was to report in on Monday. Mary Wade and I threw some sheets, blankets, pots and pans and a few other thing, of course, into the trunk of an old Chevrolet and headed off on Saturday. We arrived in San Antonio (by the way the telegram said to report on that Sunday) at sundown on Sunday and drove to the base. I tried to report in. Of course, there was nobody in to report to so I stropped at the gate and asked the guard at Randolf to call the officer of the day for me. He got on the phone and asked me who I was and I said I am First Lieutenant Douglas. I asked the guard a the gate to tell me his name, rank and serial number—Major or whoever he was—so that if anyone of them accused me of being AWOL or reporting in late I can call you and you can attest that I was really here. He laughed and he said okay, son, and I got all the information from him. I never needed to use it. The next morning I went out to the School of Aviation Medicine at Randolf, still in civilian clothes and not sworn in; I went into a class of twenty-one officers who were gathered from all over the world. I was the only person there in civilian clothes and that morning I took good notes, went over to the PX as soon as school was over, and bought my uniform and continued class in the afternoon. The interesting thing was that within just the first day I decided no question about it, I wanted to make a career out of the Air Force or Air Corps Military because the deciding factor was this that here I saw twenty physicians gathered in from all over the world. Every single one of those men knew at least one and most of them knew several other people in the room, so I thought if that’s the kind of club it s than I want to become a member of it and so I did.

After serving in Newfoundland, Langley Air Force Base Virginia, Washington, Baltimore and a great many other places I finally went in to the Air Force Surgeon General’s Office in the fall of 1958. My name along with two other Air Force Space Flight Surgeons was put on a list of people to be sent to NASA or to somebody I really don’t know who—but it probably was General Don Flickenger, who had something to do with it. He at that time was the Command Surgeon for the Air Force Systems Command. Anyhow, several months after the submission of these three names, I was surprised, honored, thrilled, and pleased to be told that I had been selected to be the Flight Surgeon for the Project Mercury Astronauts. At the time even the name “Project Mercury” was classified. The fact that they were going to put a man in space I guess was sort of common knowledge in the world but for some reason or another the “Project Mercury” part of it was classified. The selection of the Mercury Astronauts is too well detailed and there are many other sources for me to draw upon now but suffice it to say that part of their selection consisted of a very thorough physical examination conducted at the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque and another part was stress testing at the Air Force Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory at Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. An interesting story is that I was instructed to go to the Lovelace Clinic to be present when the very first group of half a dozen or so Mercury candidates arrived and I was instructed to go through the physical examination process with them and so I went in civilian clothes and all. It was an interesting thing to watch the plane come into Albuquerque in spit of the fact all this was very “hush-hush” and classified. I was able to spot at least three or four people who in my best view were Mercury candidates and lo and behold they really were. They were all in civilian clothes but there was just something about their bearing that led me to believe those guys were Mercury Candidates and when they all showed up on that Monday morning at Lovelace, they were greeted by Alex Wickdenburg and the Flight Surgeons. Alex Wickdenburg was at that time at Lovelace Clinic as Head of their Aviation Medical Department. Sure enough those three men who I saw on the plane were among them.