Lamar Soutter
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Lamar Soutter, MD (March 9, 1909 – 1996) was an American academic. He was the son of Helen Elizabeth Whiteside and Robert Soutter, a noted Boston orthopaedic surgeon. He graduated from
Early life
In July 1931 Soutter signed on to be a crew member on the maiden sail of the Atlantis,
In the summer of 1934 Soutter and a friend, Graham Webster, paddled a canoe 1500-miles through uncharted Yukon wilderness. They experienced several setbacks, including a serious injury for Webster. They arrived safely at Ft. Yukon and traveled home through Fairbanks, Alaska.
Career
Expeditions
The summer after he graduated from Harvard Medical School, Soutter joined a voyage with the famous Captain Robert A. Bartlett (1875–1946), who had been part of Admiral Robert Peary's group that discovered the North Pole in 1909. Bartlett had bought an old schooner, the Effie M. Morrissey, in 1926 and had been conducting oceanographic expeditions in the Arctic for various scientific organizations.
This particular expedition to northwest
Hindenburg Disaster
On May 6, 1937, the
Massachusetts General Hospital
After Soutter left his residencies in New York City, he settled back in Boston, his hometown. In 1940, Soutter went to work at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) to assist on the surgical staff. With the outbreak of World War II, Soutter believed that a blood bank was critical for civil defense. He solicited funds to pay for the equipment, and he and his staff created new techniques for blood filtration and purification. Patients were blood typed in advance of their operative procedures. Soutter helped to create an elaborate system for managing blood and began work advertising for volunteer donors. When the Cocoanut Grove fire occurred in Boston in November 1942, large amounts of stored plasma from the MGH blood bank played a major role in the treatment of the 500 injured.
World War II
In 1943, Soutter was assigned to the Army's Fourth Auxiliary Surgical Unit and commanded a team attached to the First and Third Armies who were fighting in Europe.
On December 26, 1944, Soutter was the first volunteer when General McAuliffe called for medical assistance for the wounded troops who were surrounded at Bastogne in Belgium near the French border. Twelve medical personnel filed into an engineless glider that had been loaded with medical supplies. The glider's towline was picked up by a C47 cargo plane and the aircraft became airborne. Then, the tether line was disengaged and the glider sailed low and silent over the forests of Ardennes. They landed in the middle of a field. The occupants had to wait for a lull in the fighting to leave the glider and then had to run for the medical tent. Soutter and the other medical personnel performed 63 operations in the next 24 hours. Within the next couple of days, the First and Third Army Divisions broke through the enemy perimeter and began to make their way to liberate Bastogne. In mid-January 1945, Soutter and each member of his medical team received the Silver Star (see left below), the second highest military medal awarded, for "conspicuous gallantry in action."
In 2002 the World War II Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge Association named their Worcester chapter after Soutter.[1] After Bastogne, Soutter was attached to the 42nd Field Hospital, where he worked with Corporal James K. Sunshine, Surgical Technician 3rd Platoon. Mr.l Sunshine recounted his World War II experiences and the beginning of a lifelong friendship with Major Soutter in an article originally published under the title "War Stories" in the Providence Sun Journal in 1994.[2]
An account of Soutter and his team's work in Bastogne was published in the Army's That Men Might Live—The Story of the Army Medical Corps.[3]
Academia
In 1952, Soutter became an associate professor in the surgery department of the
In October 1962, legislation was enacted establishing the
Medical libraries
Soutter took an active interest in libraries and the role they have played in the education of physicians throughout the ages. As a trustee of the Boston Medical Library in the 1960s, he was instrumental in orchestrating a merger of the Harvard Medical School's library collection with that of the Boston Medical Library in 1965. A large medical library, the Francis A. Countway Library, was being built expressly for the purpose of the merger. Harvard's library collection was established in 1782, the date of the founding of the medical school there, and the Boston Medical Library's collection was established in 1875.
When Soutter came to Worcester in the late 1960s, he was the catalyst for the merger of the library collection of the Worcester District Medical Society with that of the newly founded University of Massachusetts Medical School. The plans for the new school's library included a Rare Book Room specifically intended to house the collection of the Worcester Medical Library, which was established in 1798. The merger finally became a reality when the Medical School Library opened its doors in 1973. Mr Charles C. Colby III, Librarian at the Boston Medical Library, was the library consultant on the project. The Medical School Library was renamed The Lamar Soutter Library in 1981 in Soutter's honor.
Personal life
Soutter was married to Norah Goldsmith in New York City in 1939, and they had a son, Nicholas. They divorced, and in 1946 Soutter married Mary Cleveland Bigelow. Together, they raised Nicholas and two daughters. Soutter died in Concord, Massachusetts in 1996.
References
- ^ "Chapters". Archived from the original on 2002-08-03. Retrieved 2009-11-09.
- ^ "Testimony (Utah Beach – D-DAY – Normandy – June 1944) | 42d Field Hospital". 2008-02-28. Archived from the original on 2008-02-28. Retrieved 2023-11-28.
- ^ "Lone Sentry: That Men Might Live! The Story of the Medical Service - ETO -- WWII G.I. Stories Booklet".