History
In the winter of 1948, as the Medical School community (and America) was coming back to normal after the end of World War II, Dr. Michael J. Hogan sent out an inquiry to former residents about having a reunion of the U.C. Eye Residents. The handwritten rough draft of his letter survives (Figure 1 and Figure 2). Carbon copies of the final draft have been found and date the beginnings of Dr. Hogan’s ideas to February 16, 1948 (Figure 3).
Having received many favorable responses to his initial proposal, Dr. Hogan (a.k.a. “Uncle Mike”) drafted a formal letter to all of the known residents of the U.C. Medical School program (rough draft handwritten notes are seen on Figure 4 and Figure 5 along with a list of residents). He worked from a partially handwritten list of the then known U.C. residents (Figure 6 and Figure 7).
His final draft was typewritten on August 17, 1948 (no word processors!) and we do not have an original, but, some carbon copies of his original invitations still survive, one of which is reproduced here (Figure 8).
Of course, we all must remember that U.C.S.F. medical center was not a “campus” of the University of California at that time, it was governed by a Provost, and considered a division of U.C. Berkeley. The Berkeley campus conferred any undergraduate degrees at that time.
That original meeting of the University of California Eye Residents Association was held as scheduled, on September 11, 1948, and was considered a great success.
In succeeding years, the process for holding the meeting and the resident responsibilities for organizing the meeting became more refined. For example, in 1953, when second year resident Vernon Lightfoot, M.D. was the resident in charge of getting the meeting together, his letter was a simple, mimeographed, form letter that allowed for easy responding by potential attendees such as Dr. Harrington (Figure 9).
By the time Dr. Mullen was responding for the meeting, it had boiled down to returning a simple postcard for reserving your attendance (Figure 10 and Figure 11).
By the mid-1950s the rosters of the University of California Eye Residents looked like the one reproduced in Figure 12, Figure 13, Figure 14.
Over the years after Dr. Hogan started the meetings in 1948, Dr. Cordes’ role in this meeting for the residents became of more importance, not only because of his faithful attendance, but also because he would later consistently arrange for the banquets to be held at the Bohemian Club in San Francisco, among other things. When Dr. Cordes retired as Chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology, in 1959, members felt that the University of California Residents Association should be renamed in his honor because he had trained or was chairman during the training of all of the known graduates of the program at that time. He was, also, the first chairman of the “Department” of Ophthalmology. Previously, Ophthalmology had been known as a “Division” in the Department of Surgery of the School of Medicine. Since 1959,
therefore, this organization has been known as the Frederick C. Cordes Eye Society. (also see Historical References).
In 1999, we celebrated the 40th reunion of the Frederick C. Cordes Eye Society (see Scrapbook images). The actual 50th anniversary of the University of California Eye Residents Association occurred in 1998.
Therefore, historically, the 2008 meeting will actually be the 60th reunion of the University of California Residents Association. In 2009, the annual meeting was the 50th reunion of the Frederick C. Cordes Eye Society.
