Robert J. T. Joy

Joy continued to visit the departmental offices, lectures or no, continued to give the occasional lecture on the road, and attend the annual conferences of the Society for Military History and the American Association for the History of Medicine until age and health precluded him from doing so. He then entered a quiet retirement with his wife Janet until her death, again enjoying the world of the pulp science fiction magazines he had enjoyed in his youth and long collected as a hobby until his death, at the age of 90, on 30 April 2019.

In a 2010 interview for a Yale Medicine Magazine article on medicine and the military, Joy stated that, as he reflected on his long career, what he enjoyed most was tutoring, advising, and encouraging young men and women. And that, following that, what he most enjoyed was command. Even at age 81, 14 years after entering Emeritus status on the university faculty, he still visited the office one day per week.

At its 2009 Commencement, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland awarded Joy the degree of Doctor of Military Medicine, Honoris Causa. The citation to accompany the degree read:

Joy continued to teach, with Smith and a newly hired assistant professor picking up more of the course load, and Joy shedding his, until he was eventually four lectures per year to the freshman medical students. He also began reducing the amount of travelling he performed to present lectures, deferring to the staff of the Department of Medical History or to other medical historians he knew who might present on the topic. Finally, in 2005, wishing to leave the lecture platform before he had passed his prime, Joy elected to give his last scheduled lecture at the University. Delivered on 5 April 2005, in addition to the freshman medical student class, many of Joy's friends and former faculty attended as well, including six of his Military Medical History Fellows—more than half of the program's output to that point.

Joy had originally planned to retire and assume an emeritus status in 1995, remaining an additional year in order to see the transition of the Fellowship in Military Medical History into a Master of Military Medical History. Having completed that, he formally retired from the university in the summer of 1996. In a rare show of respect to Joy's role in the creation of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, he was chosen as the commencement speaker for the 1996 graduation of the school, and was awarded that year's Outstanding Civilian Educator Award. By contrast, the 1995 commencement speaker was Dr. Richard C. Reynolds, M.D., the Executive Vice President of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the 1997 commencement speaker was Dr. C. Everett Koop, M.D., Sc.D., former Surgeon General of the United States.

In 1994 the Fellowship was converted to a formal Masters producing program, and its length was expanded to 15 months. To ensure that the Fellows—now Masters students, but still referred to by that term by their fellow alumni—received proper training in historiography and other areas, the students took several classes at American University to round out their training. Between 1984, when the first Fellow was admitted, and 2010, when the last Masters student graduated (although the program remains on the books), the program produced 7 Fellows and 5 Masters recipients. Of those, three published peer reviewed papers during their fellowships, one won first place in the Annual U.S. Army Center of Military History writing contest, and one won the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States History Paper competition.

In 1986, the Section of Medical History hosted the annual meetings of both the American Military Institute and the US Air Force History Association. Both had asked to have military medical themed speaker topics and themes for their conferences, which the section provided. By 1995, after 14 years as chair and twenty years with the university, Joy announced his intent to step down and enter emeritus status, officially ending his working career.

In 1984 Colonel Thomas Munley, Chief of the Academy of Health Science's Military Science Division, which was responsible for the Army Medical Department's Officer Basic and Advanced Courses, approached Joy and asked if it would be possible to establish a training program to produce a qualified military medical history instructor for the academy, to increase the amount and quality of history presented in the Officer Basic and Advanced Courses.

With the expanded faculty, the section could begin to take on additional workload—and did. From 1982 to 1987, Joy served as the editor of the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, while Smith served as associate editor. It was also in 1982 that the USUHS started its first Master of Public Health Class, and Smith prepared and taught a 36-hour course in that program. From 1994 to 1998, Joy and Smith also taught a 24-hour series of lectures on the history of medical research to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research Fellowship in Medical Research—the same fellowship program where Joy and Sanford originally met in the 1950s. Commitments to lecture in other teaching programs in the National Capitol Region soon followed.

When Joy again announced his intent to retire, this time in March 1981, Sanford offered Joy the position of chair of the Section of Medical History—subject to a national search and approval of the board of regents—and Joy agreed, subject to his ability to hire a tenure track assistant professor. Sanford agreed, a search committee was formed, and when Joy retired on November 1, 1981 he was appointed professor and chair of the Section of Medical History. Joy then organized a national search for an assistant professor of medical history, gathering resumes and holding final interviews at the 1982 annual meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine, hosted that year by the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. After completing panel interviews at the meeting, Joy selected Dr. Dale C. Smith, PhD, a recent graduate from the History of Medicine program at the University of Minnesota as the new assistant professor in the Section of Medical History. Smith joined the section in July 1982, joining Joy and Dr. Peter Olch, MD, a retired United States Public Health Service Captain who had recently retired as the Deputy Director of the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine who had joined the section as an adjunct associate professor.

After the graduation of the inaugural class of medical students in 1980, Joy informed Sanford of his intent to retire from military service. At Sanford's request, Joy agreed to remain for an additional year, to allow for an orderly search for a replacement. Additionally, Sanford wanted to make some organizational changes in the University. With the approval of the University's Board of Regents, he reorganized the Department of Military Medicine and History and the Section of Operational and Emergency Medicine into a Department of Military and Emergency Medicine and a separate Section of Medical History, and separated the duties of the Commandant from those of the Chair of Military Medicine.

As the first students reported for classes at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology on the campus of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which the University was using for classroom and laboratory space, Joy was still recruiting his faculty and staff. This included LTC John F. Erskine, MSC, USA as Deputy Commandant and Associate Professor in 1978 and Capt Ann Marie Pease, USAF, MSC and LCDR Anthony R. Arnold, MSC, USN as Assistant Commandants and Assistant Professors in 1978 and 1979, respectively. By having an officer from each of the services assigned, they would be better able to deal with students' service unique issues as they might crop up. Joy set expectations with each arriving class as he oriented them to the Campus,, reviewed policies covering attendance, personal and professional behavior, and other requirements associated with military life. As the first class was predominately military—and small—it served as a learning tool, and adaptations were made with subsequent classes as they increased in size. Beginning with the second class, non-prior service students attended branch orientation courses prior to arriving at the university. The Commandant's Office also became responsible for those activities which were important to life as an officer—physical training, sporting events, Dining-ins and Dining-outs, publication of a student newspaper and yearbook, training and selection for students wishing to attend Airborne or Air Assault training and, beginning in 1978, Expert Field Medical Badge testing for all interested students, regardless of service. Additionally in 1978 Joy, in his role of Commandant, began quarterly inspections of the MS-1 and MS-II students for proper wear and care of their uniforms, as well as personal grooming.

When the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine opened in 1976, COL Joy was selected as the legislatively mandated Professor of Military, Naval or Aerospace Science. In this role he reflected on his experience in military medicine and his professional military education in the Armed Forces Staff College and realized that the United States Military had no joint medical doctrine or plans. COL Joy led USU to create a Department of Military Medicine and History in which students were instructed, texts were published, and integrative scholarship was practiced to create a joint military medicine for US forces. COL Joy outlined the medical school program in military medicine as it is still given more than 30 years later. His staff compiled textbooks which served as doctrine manuals for his students and his students wrote the joint medical doctrine as it exists today.

In 1975, upon the departure of Buescher, Joy advanced to the position of Director and Commandant of WRAIR. The Army Surgeon General, Lieutenant General Richard R. Taylor had described the Director's position as Joy's "dream job"—and so it should have been for any Army medical researcher—command of the Army's largest and oldest medical research facility, long associated with the giants of Army medical research, including George Miller Sternberg, Carl Rogers Darnall, Edward Bright Vedder, and Major Walter Reed himself. For Joy, a student of military medical history, it was, indeed, a dream job.

In 1973, Joy would be assigned to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research as the Institute's Deputy Director and Deputy Commandant while Colonel Edward Buescher served as Director and Commandant. The mid 1970s was a tough time for the Army Medical Research and Development community as funds were sparse and inflation high in the post-Vietnam Army and racial tensions and drug abuse problems high. Joy and Buescher formed an ideal team, with Buescher focusing "up and out" while Joy focused "down and in." The Buescher and Joy command team was forced to conduct a Reduction in Force at WRAIR but placed every person displaced before the effective date of the reduction in force.

It was during Joy's tenure as Deputy Director and Director that WRAIR saw its overseas laboratory footprint greatly expanded, with WRAIR assuming control of the overseas medical research units in Malaysia and Panama, as well as the Army's portion of the lab in Bangkok. An additional lab was established in 1973 in Brasilia as part of a cooperative agreement between WRAIR and the University of Brasilia, and the U.S. Army Medial Research Unit—Belem was established in Belem, Brazil to investigate disease transmission along the new Trans-Amazon highway.

As the inaugural class began attending courses Joy, assisted by the University's fist Assistant Dean of Students, Army Medical Corps Lieutenant Colonel (and future Army Surgeon General) Ronald R. Blanck worked to ensure that the instructors met the quality that they expected. Joy and Blanck, along with other senior leaders in the University realized that with the end of Selective Service—and with it the Doctor Draft—in 1973, the Armed Forces would become increasingly reliant on women to fill the ranks of the Medical Corps, and they expected their instructors to reflect a welcoming environment. No more would locker room humor, course talk, or inappropriate slides be allowed. With the first class over 10% female, the second class about 20% female, and later classes approaching 1/3 female, this was an important early framework for the university, and one both men took to heart, each being the father of daughters themselves.

Ever the Military Medical Historian, at the request of the Institute's Director, Joy prepared an extended annotated "Reading List in Military History and Military Medicine," which the director distributed to the staff in May 1967. Far ranging, covering topics from general military history including Slim's Defeat into Victory, Huntington's The Soldier and the State and T. R. Fehrenbach's This Kind of War to operational history—all works of S. L. A. Marshall—to works on warfare in the arctic, the desert, and, of course, the jungle and counter-insurgency, including John Masters' The Road Past Mandalay.

During the 1967-1968 school year, Joy attended the Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia. The Armed Forces Staff College, established in 1946, provided joint service education to the officers and civilians who attended it, developing a cadre of officers who could support the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff. Although it was far from the Joint training mandated by the Goldwater-Nichols Act reforms, it was the only show in town—and it granted credit for attendance at a Command and General Staff College to officers who attended it.

Another major contribution to the control of malaria in Vietnam was the introduction of diaminodiphenylsulfone (DDS). The efficacy of this drug as a prophylactic agent was confirmed in volunteers in the United States, and in 1966, a field test in Vietnam proved its value in combat troops. Subsequently, it was routinely used by military personnel in Vietnam for prophylaxis against falciparum malaria.

The team also recommended that a central rehabilitation facility for malaria patients be added to the troop list and simultaneously be used as a facility for studying the disease and treatment regimes for it. The Army Surgeon General approved the recommendation and added the 6th Convalescent Center to the deployment list. The Center was activated on 29 November 1965 at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, arrived in Vietnam on 16 March 1966 and was inactivated at Cam Ranh Bay on 30 October 1971 when its staff was used to resource the U. S. Army Drug Rehabilitation Centers at Cam Ranh Bay and Long Binh.

The U. S. Army Research Team (WRAIR), Vietnam was established in November 1963 with seven officers and 12 enlisted, under the command of then-Lieutenant Colonel Paul E. Teschan, MC, USA. With the established 12-month rotation cycle, Joy, now a Major, rotated to Vietnam as the third commander of the research team, replacing Lieutenant Colonel Stefano Vivona, MC, USA.

After a year in command without apparent harm to his career, Captain Joy was replaced as commander by Lieutenant Colonel William H. Hall, MC, who would command the lab from 1962-1965. Joy assumed the position Research Internist until 1963, when he began a period of government funded civilian training at Harvard University, being awarded a Master of Arts in Physiology in 1965. He had curtailed his education in order to assume a position as the commander of the U. S. Army Medical Research Team (WRAIR) in the Republic of Vietnam.

In July 1962, shortly after the first U.S. Army medical units were deployed to Vietnam, the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research deployed a small survey team to evaluate available resources for conducting medical research and plan for necessary expansion. That team recommended that existing medical research programs be expanded to include a research team from WRAIR, to be located in Saigon, similar to teams already operating in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur which would conduct studies of U.S. personnel and local national troops and civilian populations.

In 1961, the environmental division of the Army Medical Research Lab at Fort Knox was moved to Natick, Massachusetts, redesignated as the United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, and collocated with the Quartermaster Research and Engineering Command. Because portions of the Quartermaster Center were being incorporated into the new lab, and because the Quartermaster Center's Commanding General would remain in the laboratory director's rating chain, the Medical Department had difficulty finding a senior officer willing to assume command. Joy, still only a Captain, volunteered to command the lab and, appointed to command "at the direction of the President" in accordance with then-current command policies to exercise command over officers senior in date of rank to him, moved to Natick and assumed command of the new lab when it was activated on 1 July 1961.

As head of the U.S. Army Medical Research Team (WRIAR) in Vietnam, Joy worked closely with in-country counterparts in the Navy, Air Force, and the United States Public Health Service, which staffed the United States Operational Mission for the Department of State, as well as the Vietnamese Ministry of Health. In Vietnam he observed Joint operations as they were conducted in the 1960s, but didn't see "jointness" in the medical departments of the services.

Following the Advanced Course Joy was sent to serve as the Battalion Surgeon of the 714th Tank Battalion, stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia. As the battalion surgeon Joy served as a staff officer to the battalion commander, but he also served as the battalion's medical platoon leader at the same time, and led his platoon as the battalion engaged in a series of maneuvers at Fort Polk, Louisiana in preparation for rotation to Germany in 1956 as part of Operation Gyroscope, where the battalion would become part of the 4th Armored Group—without Joy, who by that time had moved on to his residency training in internal medicine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

In the summer of 1956, Joy returned to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he spent the next two years completing a residency in internal medicine, followed by a year-long fellowship program in medical research at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. It was during his fellowship at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research that Joy met Jay P. Sanford, another young Army doctor, a draftee who was serving out his commitment under the Berry Plan. Joy and Sanford would remain professional colleagues and friends for the rest of their lives.

Joy was awarded a reserve commission in the Medical Corps upon his graduation in June 1954, and was ordered to active duty in the Army of the United States later that month to complete an internship at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, District of Columbia. Joy later commented that while he had been offered the choice of deferring his active duty service obligation until after he had completed a civilian internship, attending an Army internship at Walter Reed made much sense to him, not only because of the quality of the training that Walter Reed would afford him, but because a First Lieutenant in the Medical Corps was paid about $250 a month, while a standard civilian intern's salary in those days was about $50 a month, and he had a wife and young child to support.

Joy's entire adult life was, in one way or another, associated with the history of medicine—from the time he was awarded the American Association for the History of Medicine's William Osler Medal as a first year medical student in 1954 until he was awarded the Association's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. In between he was acknowledged for his assistance in over 100 books, delivered over 80 named lectures, and was a visiting professor on four continents. His resume included author or co-authorship of more than 140 papers or chapters.

1954 William Osler Medal, American Association for the History of Medicine 1959 Hoff Memorial Medal for Achievement in Military Medicine, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research 1966 John Shaw Billings Award, Association of Military Surgeons of the United States 1980 William P. Clements Award for Outstanding Uniformed Services Educator, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences 1986 Distinguished Member, Army Medical Department Regiment 1986 Order of Military Medical Merit 1990 Honorary Faculty, Industrial College of the Armed Forces, Washington, D.C. 1990 Outstanding Instructor Award, Class of 1993, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences 1991 Outstanding Teacher Award, Class of 1994, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences 1992 Faculty, United States Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine, San Antonio, Texas 1992 George M. Hunter Award as Senior Lecturer in Tropical Medicine, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research 1992 Outstanding Teacher Award, Class of 1995, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences 1993 Outstanding Teacher Award, Class of 1996, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences 1994 CADUSUHS, Class of 1994 Yearbook dedication, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences 1995 Outstanding Teacher Award, Class of 1998, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences 1996 Best Lecturer Award, Class of 1999, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences 1996 Outstanding Civilian Educator of the Year, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences 1996 Commencement Speaker, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences 2002 Nicholas E. Davies Memorial Scholar Award in the Humanities and History of Medicine, American College of Physicians 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award, American Association for the History of Medicine

Joy also spent many years as a journal editor, serving as a student editor of the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences in 1953-1954, as associate editor from 1977-1980, and as editor from 1983-1987. He also served on the editorial advisory board of the American Association for the History of Medicine's Bulletin of the History of Medicine from 1993-1996.

After completing High School, Joy enrolled in the Rhode Island State College, receiving a Bachelors of Science with a dual major in pre-medicine and pre-law in 1950.

Joy then attended the Yale School of Medicine while participating in an Army Reserve Officers Training Corps Medical Corps scholarship—in the 1950s the Army had such programs—and completed his medical training in 1954.

The production of trained historians provided one benefit that was unanticipated at the time the program was created, and that was the ability to deploy medical historians to an active theater of operations. During the Vietnam War, the 44th Medical Brigade, the Army's senior medical command and control headquarters in country, had the 27th Military History Detachment, commanded by a Medical Service Corps officer, embedded in its headquarters for most of its deployment, where it collected documents, prepared historical reports, and supervised the historical activities of the command. The Army Medical Department had lost that capability in the ensuing years, and the fellows returned it to the Department. Operation Desert Storm saw two fellows deployed—one with the Center for Army Lessons Learned collection team, and a second as the theater medical historian, who collected oral history interviews, sent them to the Center for Military History, collected artifacts for the Army Medical Department Museum, and prepared the Command Historical Report for the 3rd Medical Command (Provisional). Since Desert Storm, USUHS History Fellows continued to deploy in the role of operational historians until the last of them left active duty, with the majority of them having served overseas as medical historians.

Following completion of his residency, Joy and his family moved to Fort Knox, where he was assigned to the newly constructed hospital on post, where he would practice medicine in the cardiology service while simultaneously serving as the Assistant Director, and later Director, of the Environmental Division of the U.S. Army Medical Research Laboratory at Fort Knox. He would serve in that position for two years, until the laboratory was reorganized, shifting its focus towards blood transfusion, biophysics, and psychophysiology. The U.S. Army Medical Research Laboratory at Fort Knox had originally been established as the Armored Medical Research Laboratory in the early 1940s, and had focused its research since that time on the physiological effects of armored vehicles on their crews.

Robert J. T. Joy (April 5, 1929 – April 30, 2019) was an American physician and career Army Medical Corps officer who was an internationally recognized scholar in the field of the History of Medicine. He was also a key leader in U.S. Department of Defense Medical Research and Development, and served as one of the key founding staff members of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, where he served as the first Commandant of Students, Chair of the Department of Military Medicine, and, after his retirement from military service, first Professor and Chair of the Section or Medical History at the University.