Institute be relocated on the Walter Reed reservation; that it should be an independent unit directly under the command of The Surgeon General of the Army, although "broad administrative and professional policies" would be determined by a joint Board of Governors consisting of the three Surgeons General; that the Director of the Institute should be selected by the Board of Governors; that the major fields of training in the Institute should be in advanced pathological studies; and that the "experimental facilities of the Institute be adequate and sufficiently comprehensive to permit any type of investigation which may be important in the study of morbid anatomy and disease processes.24[1]
With the approval of the Secretary of Defense, the way was cleared for a profound change in the status, organization, and functions of the Army Institute of Pathology. To work out the mechanism of the change, on 17 May 1949, Rear Adm. Joel T. Boone, MC, USN, Executive Secretary for the Interim Medical Coordinating Committee for carrying into effect the recommendations of the Committee on Medical and Hospital Services of the Armed Forces, appointed General Dart, Captain Silliphant, and Major Patterson as the sub-committee to deal with the recommendations relating to the Army Institute of Pathology. 25[2] In effect, the subcommittee was designated to work out the detailed "constitution and by-laws" of the new Armed Forces Institute, putting into effect the change in its status— a change which was effected, insofar as the Army was concerned, with the issue of the Department of the Army's General Orders Number 32 on 6 July 1949, with an effective date of 1 July.
There remained another massive obstacle to the achievement of the new Armed Forces Institute— congressional authorization and appropriation for the new building which was so desperately needed. That obstacle, too, was to be overcome— an accomplishment in which many men had a hand, but which could not have been overcome as it was nor when it was, without the determination, the drive, and the persistence of General Dart whose "prime objective" it was.
