Pathology"; Col. Virgil H. Cornell, "who modernized the Museum exhibits"; Col. James E. Ash, "who transformed the organization into an Institute of Pathology" and who upon that day had telephoned from Buffalo, N.Y., to
express his disappointment at being unable to attend; and Brig. Gen. Raymond O. Dart, "who extended the Institute's services to all the Armed Forces, and who successfully laid the groundwork that obtained the new building."
Among the other distinguished guests presented by General DeCoursey were Fred A. McNamara, Chief of the Hospital Branch, Bureau of the Budget, introduced as "the sympathetic man who learned of our plight, saw the need, and obtained the necessary executive support"; Dr. Arnold Rich of the Johns Hopkins University, the current chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board; and the three deputies for the Surgeons General who formed die Board of Governors of the AFIP— Col. Hugh R. Gilmore, Jr., for the Army; Rear Adm. John Q. Owsley for the Navy, and Col. John F. Dominik for the Air Force.
Maj. Gen. Paul H. Streit, Commanding General of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, welcomed the assemblage to the ground-breaking ceremony. Of the three ceremonies customary in connection with the construction of new buildings — the breaking of ground, the laying of the cornerstone, and the day of dedication — he described the ground-breaking as the "least spectacular" but the most "soul-satisfying occasion," as it "represents, at last, a beginning— a first evidence that dreams and hopes and plans have crystallized into reality" (fig. 91).
Yet, General Streit said, "we are not uncovering the sod on a new idea; we are celebrating the ripening — the coming-of-age — of an old one. The 'Army Medical Museum,' as the institution was first called, was authorized by the young and forward-thinking Surgeon General Hammond, in the early days of the Civil War. The plan to include the Museum as an integral part of a medical center was proposed by Lt. Col. William Cline Borden in the early post-Spanish-American War period. Surgeon General Ireland, one of the great Army surgeons general, secured the necessary land in 1919 and made it a part of the hospital grounds."
Voicing "our great pride in the past accomplishments of the late Army Medical Museum," he declared that with the additional support of the other services "together we can forge an even more illustrious future."
Speaking for one of the "sister services," Rear Adm. C. J. Brown, Deputy Surgeon General of the Navy, struck a keynote when he said :
It is, to me, an important and most interesting happenstance that the first permanent edifice to be built under the aegis of the unification of the Armed Forces should he. not an
