The year 2010 marks my 50th year of involvement with the specialty of radiology. It was in June 1961 that I took my job as public relations director of the American College of Radiology (ACR). In a matter of the first few months, I became aware that I was the spokesman for all of radiology to newspapers, magazines, radio, and television and in the next few years to anyone else in the public domain—including politicians.
I was hired by Bill Stronach, who had been the ACR executive director for some 15 years. Bill was a wonderful boss. I was the second public relations director. My predecessor, Hugh Jones, was a very able public relations person with a radio broadcasting background. He had helped build the cooperative public relations project that Eastman Kodak supported for the ACR. And he was hired away by the advertising agency that Kodak used for all of its products and the radiology promotion.
Bill Stronach was the second ACR executive director. He took over shortly after he finished law school a year after the end of World War II. In 1961, the ACR had approximately 5000 members, a budget of about a quarter million dollars a year, and a staff of 8 persons. Except for Bill, me, and his mother-in-law, who was the office manager, the others handled the membership records, tended to the College’s job placement effort, managed its annual meeting, and typed his correspondence and then mine. So he had the entire responsibility for staffing all of the ACR commissions, as well as managing its board of chancellors.
I had admitted that my knowledge of radiology was very thin, and my understanding of how the ACR fitted with the other societies was somewhat likewise. On my first day, I found my desk stacked with folders of Bill’s correspondence to our members and to everyone else. He explained that when I dictated letters or wrote, my secretary was to give him my correspondence. I could ask him about his letters and he could correct me if I strayed from his good intentions. That was part of my learning experience.
The other part was my visits to Chicago radiologists to see what they did in the dark basements. If I was to watch a fluoroscopic exam, I learned to ask for a lead apron, to ask no questions in front of the patient, and to stay out of the way.
To my delight, a few weeks after I started, he called me in and told me he would assign some of the commissions to me. He kept the commissions that related to radiology practice and to relationships with the American Medical Association and other medical societies. I was given public relations, a logical assignment, the commission on education, the commission on radiologic technology, the commission on radiologic units, standards and protection, and new commissions on public health and government relations. I attended all of the meetings of the board of chancellors. And a year later, I was asked to help organize an ACR council of radiologists representing state societies. Part of my chores for those commissions and their working committees was to organize their meetings, record their minutes, and then act with volunteers to carry out their projects. By then, I had become acquainted with the leaders of most other radiology societies and with the market folks on the major companies who furnished equipment and supplies.
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