As part of its plan to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology, ASTRO has embarked upon plans to publish a comprehensive history of the Society.
The History Committee has been making plans for the 2008 celebration of ASTRO’s 50th anniversary. Committee members have been actively conducting oral history interviews with some members who have knowledge of the early years of ASTRO and with others who helped shape the Society later on. Several committee members, including Herman Suit, M.D., Luther Brady, M.D., and Seymour Levitt, M.D., joined the Society in the late 1950s when it was still a club.
The History Committee is currently in the process of transcribing the oral history interviews with plans to place those transcriptions on ASTRO’s Web site in the near future. That way, ASTRO members will be able to read first-person accounts of the development of the Society and the history of the specialty.
Another key element of the History Committee’s work is overseeing the preparation of a definitive, 160-page book on the history of ASTRO. The committee is working with Bill Beck of Lakeside Writers’ Group in Indianapolis, Ind., who is researching and writing the history of the Society. Writer and historian Bill Beck got his start writing corporate and institutional history in 1985. Since then, he has more than 60 published books to his credit, including written histories of the American College of Preventive Medicine and the Association of Public Health Laboratories. Beck is a 1971 graduate of Marian College in Indianapolis and did graduate work in American History at the University of North Dakota.
Beck has already written a lengthy chapter outline for the ASTRO history book and has been to the Society’s Fairfax headquarters to research ASTRO’s historical documents. He found a treasure trove of material, including the “black book” that contains the minutes of the meetings at Chicago restaurants that led to the formation the American Club of Therapeutic Radiologists, the predecessor of ASTRO.
“ASTRO maintains an archive of more than 50 banker’s boxes of historical records at off-site storage in the Washington, D.C., area,” Beck said. “An examination of material judged to be of significance to the 50th anniversary history project reveals a large number of documents that will be of critical importance in writing the Society’s history. The material includes the minutes of board meetings from December 1955 to the early 2000s.”
Beck also is conducting interviews with a number of past presidents and ASTRO staffers on the history of the Society. He was in Philadelphia recently for the 2006 ASTRO Annual Meeting. While there, he interviewed Fran Glica, the Philadelphian who handled ASTRO administrative affairs for 20 years while the Society was managed by the American College of Radiology. Beck also interviewed Drs. Suit, Brady and Levitt, all of whom have been associated with the Society and its predecessors for nearly 50 years.
“The oral history interviews put flesh on the bare bones of documentary history,” Beck said. “To hear from participants about the early meetings at Barney’s Market Club steak house brings a sense of closeness to the history of the Society.”
Beck will continue researching the Society’s history through the spring, and he expects to complete a first draft of the manuscript during the summer of 2007. ASTRO will publish the manuscript as a fully-illustrated book in early 2008, in time for the Society’s 50th anniversary celebration.