When I was in college, the Korean War was just ended and the Draft was still active. I joined ROTC to insure uninterrupted education. I was lucky enough to get into graduate school and worked, got married had kids and then the ARMY said “Time to Serve”.

Again, I got lucky.

Some of the research I was helping with at Northeastern University (NU) in Boston was for a Professor who had Army & Air Force contracts to study the biological effects of laser radiation. Among other things, I had designed and built for him several Carbon Dioxide lasers after the then exciting new work at Bell Labs, published by C.K.N Patel.

The professor, Dr. Sam Fine, wanted me to stay at NU and asked some people in the Army Surgeon General’s Office if they would got to bat for him (and me). In a matter of a few phone calls and one visit to Washington DC, my Service Branch changed from Ordnance Corps to Medical Service Corps.

It seems the Army had slightly different ideas, however. They were expanding their own Laser Safety work and wanted someone with my background working in the US Army Medical Research Lab (USAMRL) at Ft Knox, Kentucky.

They also had plans for a recent Ophthalmology Research Fellow to work on setting up a program to study thresholds of eye injury from various lasers at the lab, too. He arrived shortly after I did.

My jobs would be to help set up and run the lasers, do some thermal modeling and handle the dosimetry tasks.
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