Truman's Doctor

President Truman last week appointed as his personal physician an Army doctor who has never treated him, but who happens to be from Missouri too. Tall, handsome Colonel Wallace H. Graham, 34, who went to the University of Missouri, where he was a boxer and track star, got his medical degree at Creighton University in Omaha, and studied surgery at Harvard, Chicago, Budapest, Szeged (Hungary) and Vienna. He went into practice in Kansas City with his father, Dr. J. W. Graham, who is a friend of Harry Truman's. On the side, young Dr. Graham continued surgical research. He joined the Army in 1941, was wounded soon after the Normandy invasion and was invalided home. But he was back in Europe on V-E day.

He was working at the 97th Evacuation Hospital at Stuttgart when he got a presidential summons to report at Potsdam. There Mr. Truman asked him a few questions. Says Graham: "I guess I passed because the next day they asked me about the appointment. . . ."

Young Dr. Graham does not expect to be kept too busy at the White House--the President's health being what it is. Besides giving his No. 1 patient a daily once-over, the Colonel hopes to continue surgery at Walter Reed (so long as he stays in the Army) and teach in his spare time. Said he: "I asked Dad if this was a political appointment, because I like to stay away from that sort of thing, and Dad said:'No, it certainly isn't.' "

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