Lifetime Achievement Award: Dr. Stanford Rossiter

He was born 92 years ago in Salt Lake City, Utah. Unlike his father, who was a Union Pacific Railroad engineer, Dr. Rossiter chose to attend medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1940. He began his residency in surgery at the University of California, San Francisco, but was called to serve in World War II as a physician and a base radiologist in the army a few months later after Pearl Harbor in 1941. Why did he decide to become a radiologist? "I didn't choose," he told me. Apparently the commanding officer needed someone to take X-rays. "It took about 10 seconds to sign a change in my character," Dr. Rossiter recalled.

He found serving in World War II "difficult." He first participated as a triage officer at the Battle of the Bulge in 1944 and then served in southern France where one of his duties was to do an inspection of the prostitutes in the area. "We took smears and chest X-rays," he remembered. After the war, he spent two months at the French Neurosurgical Institute in Paris where he learned myelography, which is a radiographic examination that uses a contrast medium to detect spinal cord injuries, cysts, and tumors. In 1946, he returned to the University of California, San Francisco, as a resident in radiology, finishing in 1948. After residency, he organized the Menlo Medical Clinic in Menlo Park and, in 1950, he became the first radiologist at Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City. Along with one other physician, he also ran the Radiology Division of the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Hospital.

I asked him what Palo Alto, California, was like 70 years ago. He remembered first visiting Palo Alto as a member of the University of Utah polo team in 1935: "Utah was cold and wet. Palo Alto was just balmy. I liked what I saw, and I decided to come back." And so he did. He recalled that one of his most vivid memories of the Palo Alto area was in 1941 while he was sitting on a hill that is now part of the Sharon Heights Country Club: "I sat on the hill and watched battle dust from Woodside followed by the sound of horns, bugles, dogs--never saw a fox!"

Yet the biggest changes he has seen over the past years have been technological advances, which have also been the most challenging part of his career at Stanford: "Before, I did mostly gastroenterology and mammography. And now magnetic resonance imaging, ultrasound, positron emission tomography, and multiple row CT scan, have evolved." Yet it was the lack of technological development that got him in trouble with the law. Practicing at a time before the invention of image intensification for fluoroscopy, Dr. Rossiter wore red goggles while driving to the Veterans Administration Hospital, so that he would not lose his dark adaptation. He claims he was stopped for driving with red goggles, which canceled the red in traffic lights: "I was arrested for driving with red goggles on, just once!"

Overall, the most fulfilling part of his career has been his employment by Stanford and the Veterans Administration Hospital as a radiologist: "I enjoyed working more than playing golf or anything else; there are so many more rewards." While he cherishes his work as a radiologist, he does not consider it his greatest accomplishment. Neither has his highest achievement been the founding of the Menlo Medical Clinic, nor the establishment of the radiology clinic at Sequoia Hospital, nor his longevity. His greatest accomplishment was marrying his wife, Rickie, whom he met when he was a medical student and she was a patient at Ridley Park Hospital: "I examined her then and I liked what I saw. We went to parties together and I married her."

(To read more about Dr. Stanford Rossiter, please see The World of Stanford Radiology: 1901-2005 by Otha W. Linton, MSJ, and the May 21, 2006 PA Times Leader article "Joy of Work Keeps Oldest Doctor on Duty, Full of Stories" http://www.topix.net/content/kri/3215921163069702350127154860862235801710.)