As a student, Bill Dammes (B.B.A.’61) was a member of Alpha Kappa Psi, a national business and professional fraternity that, on several occasions, had the honor of featuring Dr. Homer Stryker (a 1916 alumnus of Western) at their meetings. In preparation for a recent visit and tour of the Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, Dammes took a moment to put some of his memories of Dr. Stryker to paper. The image below features Alpha Kappa Psi from the 1961 Brown & Gold Yearbook.
My Dr. Homer Stryker Memories, by Bill Dammes
Between the years of 1959 and 1961 on three occasions I had dinner with Dr. and Mrs. Stryker. Although at the time I was a young and clueless college student, it is a memory that stuck with me for the past 58 years. As I prepare to tour the WMU Homer Stryker School of Medicine I am compelled to write this account of those memories.
Between 1959 and graduation in 1961, I was a member of Alpha Kappa Psi Fraternity at Western Michigan University. We had a house on Academy St. and although we had 50 or more members there were only 15 members living in the house and only 10 of those had a meal plan and ate meals at the house.
Alpha Kappa Psi was a “National Business and Professional Fraternity” and a national requirement was to have one business meeting a month. This was a meeting of a business nature outside the normal operational meetings. At least once a year during that period, Dr. Stryker served as our business speaker.
Dr. and Mrs. Stryker would come an hour or two before the meeting and have dinner with those 10 who had the meal plan. This was no well-to-do fraternity financially. We ate off plastic plates, drank from plastic glasses, and the silver was one step above plastic. In fact, the dinner tablecloth was plastic.
I guess I talked more than the others and I was fortunate enough to be assigned to sit next to Mrs. Stryker. Dr. Stryker sat at the head of the table with Mrs. Stryker to his right. I remember on the second visit leaning over and suggesting to Mrs. Stryker that if she felt compelled she wouldn’t need to come to (the plastic) dinner. She replied enthusiastically, “Oh no, Dr. Stryker and I would never miss this dinner or this evening. We enjoy it so much.”
The “Business Meeting” presentation was a whole additional experience. All members of the fraternity were required to come and when Dr. Stryker was speaking they were there. Dr. Stryker gave specific instructions. The room was to be set up with rows of chairs and with a waste basket every two chairs. Dr. Stryker’s presentations included graphic slides of operations and other medical procedures he had performed and the waste baskets were a required precaution. They were used on a couple of occasions but as a group, we were stout men. A table in the middle of the chairs with access to an electric outlet for the projector was the only other requirement. On the second floor of the three story fraternity flat was a large open room that accommodated the presentation nicely.
I remember Dr. Stryker telling us how he invented the saw that cuts casts without cutting the skin. As I recall it was by using an oscillating blade. Apparently he was working very hard and trying to find a more efficient way of cutting casts off arms and legs. He explained that in the middle of the night, the oscillating blade idea came to him and he got up and immediately called an assistant and told him to meet him at the “lab.” I remember thinking this guy is a doctor who really is part engineer, part inventor. Add the “lab” comment and I immediately thought of Thomas Edison. I have learned recently the hospital had given Dr. Stryker a room in the basement specifically for this type of activity.
As a side note I was very interested when he began talking about the cast cutting saw. In high school I had a fractured wrist and a sprained knee both of which required casts. It is very intimidating to see that blade that looks and sounds like a circular saw cut that cast without damaging the skin. I wondered how they did that. That night at the fraternity house I found out directly from the inventor and patentee. You bet, that was memorable.
As I said I was “clueless.” A kid who really had no working knowledge of Kalamazoo or Dr. Stryker. It was obvious he was a successful orthopedic surgeon. What I did know at that time was that each dinner and presentation was a great experience and these were special people. Mrs. Stryker was elegant and he was dynamic. Both were genuine, engaging, and interested in the young men involved in the evenings’ activities.
It was not until years later that I realized the significance of those experiences with Mrs. and Dr. Stryker. I think it was at an alumni gathering before a football game at Florida State or Auburn and Dr. Stryker’s son was in attendance. It was there that I learned the scope of Dr. Stryker’s success and accomplishments. I knew at that fraternity house a clueless kid was experiencing something special, I just didn’t realize how special.