Fitzsimons’ meeting in the spring of 1976. Front row left to right: George Ward, —, —, Lyndon Mansfield, Frank James. Second row; —, —, —, Richard Evans, Harry Witaker, —, Harold Nelson, —, Cleve Posey. Back row includes Robert Greely, Richard Weber, Harry Spaulding, and Robert Jacobs. Only 3 USAF attendees: Witaker from Malcolm Grow, Posey was a fellow at Fitzsimons, and Jacobs from WHMC.

Starting in approximately 1968, an annual meeting of military allergists was undertaken, sponsored by the Fitzsimons Army Medical Center as part of the ongoing  Carl W. Hempel Symposium that had been established in 1948 as a Tuberculosis  meeting.  The military allergist were given two days and the pulmonary section was given2 days. This meeting was utilized as a prelude to the upcoming College and Academy meetings during which presentations were made to attendees from the military medical community and personnel from the National Jewish allergy/immunology program. Wilford Hall fellows made yearly presentations from 1976 forward. This symposium was continued until the closure of The Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in approximately 1995. This symposium then became a yearly event at the AAAAI meeting for military attendees as the Harold S. Nelson Military Allergy/Immunology Symposium.

Nelson, Harold <nelsonh@njhealth.org>

To:Robert Jacobs

Tue, May 24 at 1:19 PM

Bob,

Nice to hear you are still going strong.

The TB course was started first, sometime in the 1950’s. I attended it in the fall of 1961, when I was an internal medicine resident at Letterman Army Hospital. Shorty thereafter they started including general pulmonary subjects.  I was assigned to Fitzsimons General Hospital in July 1967.  The next year, we were invited to add some allergy subjects. The TB portion became less and less and it became equally divided into pulmonary and allergy (two days each). Then, sometime in the 1970’s, the Army decided to concentrate all its internal medicine subspecialty courses at Letterman. The pulmonary portion moved, but allergy did not because we were a combined pediatric/internal medicine program. The allergy/immunology course became the “Armed Forces Allergy Society” meeting (I’m not sure what the exact name for the group was). It remained so until Fitzsimons was closed (about 1995) when it was moved to the Thursday preceding the AAAAI annual meeting.

Certainly Wilford Hall was also a major contributor to the meeting, once it became the Armed Forces Allergy Society annual meeting, so its nice you are including it.

Regards,

Hal

Fitzsimons’ meeting in the spring of 1982: Dramatic changes in USAF participation with Bill Culver, Bruce Martin, Joe Smith, Bruce Nelson, Angelo Freda, Jimmy Chevalier, Mike Martin, and Eli Whitney in attendence.