Doctors in the Armed Forces

Monika Dalrymple, M.D. ’96 joined the Air Force ROTC in college and served 12 years in the military. She presently specializes in gastrointestinal radiology within a group practice in San Antonio.

Mitchell Edson, M.D. ’56 a captain in the Navy, practices four days a week at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C., where he was chief of the urology residency program between 1978 and 1996. He completed residencies in surgery and urology at the St. Albans Naval Hospital in New York City, and was chair of the Department of Urology at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

Martin Fackler, M.D. ’59 served on a Navy transport ship at a Navy hospital in Da Nang, Vietnam, and in hospitals in Japan and Germany. After 20 years in the military he started and directed a lab for the study of gunshot wounds at the Presidio in San Francisco when it was an Army base. He is considered one of the world’s foremost ballistics experts.

Mahlon V.R. Freeman, M.D. ’55 joined the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve while a senior in high school, and after medical school joined the Army. He served from 1955 until his retirement, with the rank of colonel, in 1978. During his service he trained in ob/gyn and was stationed in Puerto Rico; Fort Lewis in Washington state; Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; and Madigan Army Medical Center. Freeman also trained in cytogenetics and served as liaison between the Army’s Office of the Surgeon General to the National Institutes of Health.

J. McLeod “Mac” Griffiss, M.D. ’66 a retired colonel in the Army Reserves, is professor of laboratory medicine and chief of immunochemistry at the University of California, San Francisco, and a specialist in infectious diseases at the San Francisco VA Medical Center.

William Heydorn, M.D. ’59 served in Army hospitals in Korea, Germany, and San Francisco. Heydorn now surveys hospitals for the Joint Commission International, an organization that accredits hospitals around the world.

Scott Hines, M.D. ’99 served in the Navy before attending medical school. He saw combat in the first Gulf War as a fighter pilot and served in Iraq as a flight surgeon during the second Gulf War. He retired from the military in 2009 after 22 years of service.

Robert J.T. Joy, M.D. ’54 served in the Army from 1954 to 1981 as a battalion surgeon and was founding commander of the Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine. He held senior staff positions in medical research in the Office of the Army Surgeon General and in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In 1981 he founded the Department of Medical History at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and became professor emeritus in 1996.

Walter W. Karney, M.D. ’62 served in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps from 1962 until 1994, when he retired at the rank of captain. During his career he was U.S. Navy Governor for the American College of Physicians, U.S. Navy Representative of the National Board of Medical Examiners, and Technical Advisor for HIV-Related Issues for the U.S. Navy Surgeon General. He was also active in the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences and a Fellow in the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Alcide M. Lanoue, M.D. ’60 spent 38 years in active service in the military and became Surgeon General of the Army in 1992. During his military service Lanoue also served as commandant of the United States Army Academy of Health Sciences, Fort Sam Houston, Texas; Deputy Surgeon General, Office of the Surgeon General, United States Army, Falls Church, Virginia; Commanding General, United States Army Health Services Command, Fort Sam Houston, Texas.

Craig H. Llewellyn, M.D. ’63, M.P.H. retired from the Army as a colonel and now divides his time between Florida and Vermont. He is professor and chair of the Department of Military and Emergency Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences School of Medicine; founding director of the Center for Disaster and Humanitarian Assistance Medicine; and a member of the executive committee of the National Disaster Life Support Educational Consortium. He also works with academic institutions as well as federal, state, and county organizations in organizing and teaching emergency medical preparedness.

John C. Lundell, M.D. ’94 received an Air Force scholarship to attend medical school, as did his wife, Andrea L. Lundell, M.D. ’94. John Lundell served in Iraq during the second Gulf War; he is presently practicing as an anesthesiologist in Dallas. Andrea Lundell practices radiology in Rockwall, Texas.

Richard Nahouraii, M.D. ’96, served as an active duty surgeon in the United States Air Force from 2002 to 2005 and in the United States Army from 2005 to 2008. He is currently a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army Reserve. Nahouraii has served as a trauma surgeon in Afghanistan at both Kandahar Air Field and Bagram Air Field. He also served as a surgeon in Iraq during “'the surge,” both in Baghdad and with a Forward Surgical Team. He was later sent far forward to Combat Outpost Sparrowhawk. In December 2012 Nahouraii was deployed with the 352nd Combat Support Hospital in Afghanistan’s Khost province in Forward Operating Base Salerno near the Pakistan border.

William M. Narva, M.D. ’56 spent most of his 35-year Navy career in the Washington, D.C., area. He was staff medical officer for the chief of naval operations, director of the Naval Reserve Division at the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, and vice president of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Five years after being promoted to rear admiral in 1982, he was appointed attending physician to the U.S. Congress, which included members of the Supreme Court. A specialist in dermatology, Narva treated every president from Lyndon B. Johnson to George H.W. Bush.

Lionel M. Nelson, M.D. ’69 had no interest in the military until 1984, when he joined the local Army Reserve Special Operations Civil Affairs Unit in San Jose, Calif. After training as a flight surgeon he went on short missions in civil-military operations in Southeast Asia. In 2008 he volunteered for a mission in Iraq. He presently practices otolaryngology in San Jose.

Sunny Ramchandani, M.D. ’04 is a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy. He is the integrated chief of general internal medicine at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. He deployed to Afghanistan as the Senior Medical Mentor for the Afghan National Security Forces in 2009, guided the execution of a new health care reconstruction strategy, and received the Bronze Star Medal.

Gabriel Rocha, PA-C ’09 enlisted in the Army in 2002 and trained as a medic. In 2003, he was deployed to Baghdad and treated casualties from the bombing of the United Nations headquarters there. Rocha has since joined the Navy, where he will serve as a physician associate.

Paul Rolston, MMSc, PA-C ’02 is a captain in the United States Army who recently returned from a 15-month deployment in Iraq where he served on a combat outpost with an infantry company. In Iraq he worked with coalition forces, teaching Iraqi physicians and developing local national medical assets. While doing so he remained the sole line medical provider for his infantry soldiers engaged in combat operations in Abu Ghraib, Nassir Wa Salam, Sadr City, and in and around Baghdad. He is now the battalion surgeon for the Airborne Rangers at 6th Ranger Training Battalion, Eglin AFB, Florida.

Benjamin D. Smith, M.D. ’01, HS ’06 served in the United States Air Force from 2006 through 2010, when he left with the rank of major. For four years he was a staff radiation oncologist in the Air Force. He is now an assistant professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology, Division of Radiation Oncology, at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In 2010 he received the Meritorious Service Medal from the Air Force.

Philip Steeves, M.D. ’70 was an Air Force flight surgeon in the Vietnam War. In addition to flying combat in supersonic fighters in that war, he served in the Air National Guard, again in fighters (F-15s), in deployments that took him from the jungles of South America to Antarctica (even the South Pole itself).”I met many fascinating folks in our military service,” Steeves said. “But the warmest feeling I enjoy looking back on it all is the opportunity I was given to serve this great nation, none of which would have occurred without the medical education I was privileged to have.”

Richard S.K. Young, M.P.H. ’73, M.D. ’73 a pediatric neurologist and chair of pediatrics at the Hospital of Saint Raphael in New Haven, is a colonel in the Connecticut Army National Guard. He has completed three tours in Iraq.

Heather C. Yun, M.D. ’01 a major in the United States Air Force, is medical director of infection control at San Antonio Military Medical Center and assistant professor of medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. She is also assistant chief of the Infectious Disease Service, San Antonio Military Medical Center; and associate program director of the Infectious Diseases Program, San Antonio Uniformed Services Health Education Consortium.

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Are you working in military medicine or another of the fields we’ll be profiling in our “Alumni Career Paths” series? Do you know medical school alumni, former Yale house staff, or fellows who are? Send us the names and then check this Web edition ofYale Medicine to view an expanding list of alumni with similar interests. You can write to us at ymm@yale.edu.

“Alumni Career Paths” future articles:

• International health and research
• The front lines of clinical practice
• Academic medicine
• Physician/writers