History

Origins of the Southeastern Hand Society

In 1975, Lamar Fleming and I completed our training at Duke and embarked upon academic careers in hand surgery at Emory University in Atlanta and The University of Alabama in Birmingham respectively. As novices in the field, we often encountered less than optimal results with our surgical procedures and also found that some issues and techniques, that we had learned in our training or read in the literature, seemed questionable. As we were far too young to frankly engage the "Deans" of Hand Surgery in debate or to admit our failures to the "establishment", we sought a forum to discuss these matters of concern. From the time that we had left Duke, we had considered establishing an alumni hand group. For a number of reasons, this effort was delayed for several years. By 1978, a number of other Duke graduates were out in the academic realm: Bob Adelaar at MCV, Don Bright at Duke, Ollie Edmunds at Tulane, and Gary Poehling at Bowman Gray, while Glen Barden and Jim Boatright were in private practice. Lamar became aware that a group of young hand surgeons in Louisiana, some of whom had trained with Dan Riordan, wanted to form a discussion group. These hand surgeons included Bob Chuinard and Gene Dabazies at LSU, Butch Lazaro in Opelousas, Clint McAlister in Bossier City, and Cedric Lowery and Harold Stokes in New Orleans. He suggested that we join forces to provide a broader background and experience to the group. So that our experiences would not be stunted by a skewed population of patients, we made an early decision to include surgeons from both the academic scene and private practice For some long forgotten reason, we initially decided to limit the geographical boundaries of our group to the southeastern United States. We broke the rules, immediately, by inviting Jim Culver from the Cleveland Clinic, since he had trained at the University of Virginia and Jim Thompson who had trained with Bill Littler in New York and was at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. We also invited Bill Bowers who was at the University of North Carolina, John Buckley who had trained at Mayo Clinic and was in Tuscaloosa, Dick Herrick who had trained in Louisville and was in Opelika, Alabama, and John Packer from Raleigh.

Lamar Fleming, Bob Chuinard, and I developed the initial organizational plan and invited the other founders. We agreed on the format for the meetings: frank discussion of controversial issues and techniques, and the presentation of problem areas and cases. We also felt that this was an ideal forum to present new ideas and techniques, to receive opinions from the group on the efficacy and soundness of these concepts. Some ideas presented in this forum had a huge impact in the field: distal radioulnar joint anatomy and reconstruction (Bill Bowers), wrist arthroscopy with the first teaching symposium (Gary Poehling), while others came and went.

With the help of Don Siegelman, then Secretary of State and recently Governor of Alabama, we established the Southeast Hand Society as a tax-exempt organization in Alabama. The first meeting was held in 1978 at The Grand Hotel in Point Clear, Alabama on Mobile Bay. As first President of the Society, my presidential address was on "Hubris", the ancient Greek word for inappropriate pride when a mortal considered himself on the level of the Gods and was subsequently humiliated or "cut down to size". The point was to show humility and to maintain an open mind. Interestingly, subsequent Presidents have reminded the SEHS of this philosophy on a recurring basis. As we were still in an organizational mode for our second meeting, I also presided in 1979 and we had our first distinguished Presidential Guest Speaker. Our first such invitee was Dick Smith from Harvard, whom I had always admired for his willingness to challenge established concepts and to graciously engage in a good argument or discussion. He proved to be all that and entertaining as well. We returned to Point Clear (as was the initial plan for alternate years) with Lamar Fleming as President and our friend Dick Eaton as the Presidential Guest Speaker. By this time the group was really enjoying the travel club concept and attendance, including spouses, was almost 100%. Between golf, tennis, bike riding, our cocktail parties and dinners, and the spirited meetings, we all seemed enthralled with the Southeastern Hand Society. We met twice each year: our annual get together in the spring and for a cocktail party each fall at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand. We decided after this meeting not to alternate with Point Clear, but rather to pick a new resort site each spring and to follow the format of morning meetings, afternoon sporting events, and planned evening cocktail parties. The basic format and pervasive philosophy of the founders has persisted. A number of our Presidential Guests have voluntarily returned for subsequent meetings, a testament to the uniqueness, open discussion format, and camaraderie of the Southeastern Hand Society.

John S. Gould, M.D.

Birmingham, Alabama

November 26, 2002