Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/379

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LIFE IN THE NEW BUILDING
367

Figure 125.—Lectures, with and without the use of visual aids, are an important part of the Institute's educational mission. In this instance, Col. Joseph L. Bernier (later Maj. Gen. and Chief of the Dental Corps, U.S. Army), is backed up by television images on four receiving sets.

With the increased room available in Chase Hall, it became possible to take many specimens out of the footlocker storage to which they had been consigned when the wanderings of the Museum had begun, 15 years before. Funds were found, moreover, for the purchase of 36 new-type exhibit cases for the display of specimens under more advantageous conditions.[1]

This slight easing of space pressures, however, and the improvement of display materials, did not end the vicissitudes and wanderings of the Museum. Chase Hall was squarely within the area of the Southwest Washington Urban Renewal Project, and was known to be doomed at an early date. The question was, therefore, one of finding new quarters before the present ones were taken over by the wreckers as part of the rebuilding of a section of the city.

Nevertheless, doomed to destruction as the building was, the curators and staff of the Museum attempted, with quite a remarkable degree of success, the task of refurbishing and enlivening the quarters in which the Museum was located. Colonel Gilmore retired from active service in June 1955, and was

  1. Annual Report, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, 1955, pp. 35-37.