Who’s Who in Orthopedics
his brother, Mr. Van Wyck Hoke of Yanceville, North Carolina.
Dr. Hoke was a member of the American Orthopedic Association and its President from 1925 to 1926, presiding at the annual meeting of the Association held in Atlanta in 1926. He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons. He was one of the five orthopedic consultants for the Shriners’ nationwide chain of hospitals for crippled children, which move- ment he had sponsored; he was also an important member of the advisory board of the Alfred I.
Du Pont Institute for Crippled Children at Wilmington, Delaware.
The University of North Carolina conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws in 1931. In this same year, at the insistence of President Roosevelt, he accepted the appoint- ment of Medical Director of the Institution for the Treatment of Infantile Paralysis at Warm Springs, Georgia, resigning this position in 1935 to resume his private practice in Atlanta.
Dr. Hoke’s contributions to orthopedic surgery have been many and have been internationally recognized. The original and valuable operative methods he devised for the treatment of certain disabilities of the feet are still known as “Hoke’s operation for claw foot” and “Hoke’s arthrodesis.”
Hoke was a great teacher as well as a great surgeon. He inspired countless young men to acquire surgical skill and to emulate the highest standards of professional conduct, which he exemplified. He ploughed the field of medicine deeply, leaving the soil more productive for the labor of those younger physicians who had received their inspiration from him. “History shows you men whose master touch not so much modifies as makes anew”—Browning, had he known him, might well have placed Hoke in this category.
Dr. Hoke’s chief relaxations were golf and hunting with the dogs, and he held membership in the Piedmont Driving Club and in the Druid Hills Golf Club. He was a thorough sportsman in the best sense of the word, loving “the wide-open spaces” and “the great out-of-doors.”
Although Michael Hoke always felt intensely, and was unswerving in his loyalty to the South, he maintained an unusual breadth of view and was remarkably free from prejudice. On one occasion, he took a northern friend to see the great southern war memorial on Stone Mountain, which was then only partly finished, but the archi- 144
Michael HOKE
1874–1944
The field of action is not the field of intellect: it is the field of character. It is not the intensity but the duration of ideals that makes a great man.
This wise observation of Elihu Root is pecu- liarly applicable to the life of Dr. Michael Hoke, internationally known orthopedic surgeon, great teacher, kindly counsellor, and friend. Dr. Hoke was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina, on June 28, 1874. He was the son of the well-known General Robert F. Hoke and Lydia Van Wyck.
General Hoke was, we believe, the youngest Major General in the Confederate Army.
Dr. Hoke’s early years were spent in Raleigh, North Carolina. Entering the University of North Carolina, he received the degree of Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering in 1893 and was captain of the famous football team of that year.
In 1895, he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University of Virginia. Post- graduate study and research then followed at the medical schools of Johns Hopkins and Harvard.
In 1897, he began private practice in Atlanta, Georgia, specializing later in orthopedic surgery.
On April 20, 1904, he was married to Miss Laurie H. Harrison of Atlanta. The union was a completely happy one, Mrs. Hoke entering fully into both his professional life and his many outside interests. Mrs. Hoke and their two chil- dren, Charles McGhee of Beaufort, South Carolina and Edward Jastrum of St. Louis, Mis- souri, and two grandchildren survived him, as did
Who’s Who in Orthopedics tect’s drawings of the completed project were on
view and were very impressive. Behind the key figure of General Robert E. Lee, the sculptor had planned to carve a group of other Confederate generals, one of whom would undoubtedly have been Dr. Hoke’s famous father, Major General Robert F. Hoke. Dr. Hoke greatly admired the conception and was deeply moved at the thought of what the superb memorial would mean to the South.
As he and his northern friend were moving away, Hoke said to him, “I wish Borglum (the sculptor) would do one more thing. I wish he would place the figure of Abraham Lincoln on the summit of the mountain looking down on the whole group.” To Hoke “the war was over,”
and he had recognized the spirit of the Great Emancipator and wished the South as well as the North to pay him tribute.
This slender ascetic looking man with dark and piercing eyes, a friendly smile, and a delightfully keen sense of humor must have been a sturdy youth in his student days. In later life, pulmonary disease and his strenuous work slowly sapped his strength but never his bonhomie nor his endear- ing kindness.
In 1937, he retired from private practice and moved with his family to the lovely old town of Beaufort, South Carolina. They called their home
“Windy Marsh” and for a while Dr. Hoke’s health was better, and his passing came as a shock to his numberless friends.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes has given us his ideal of living. “Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum; to hammer out as compact and solid a piece of work as you can; to try to make it first rate and to leave it unadvertised.” Michael Hoke completely exemplified this ideal.
145
Sir Frank Wild HOLDSWORTH
1904–1969
Frank Holdsworth was one of the great orthope- dic surgeons of his generation, but the achieve- ments for which he will be remembered extended far beyond that. He was a fine teacher, a great innovator, and in his later years an almost fanati- cal campaigner for a sound and rational system for training the surgeons of the future. In this campaign his prime consideration was to get a square deal for the young man in training, and he was not prepared to subjugate this either to the needs of the National Health Service or the con- venience of consultants. Few younger generations can have had such a redoubtable champion from the ranks of the older, and although for many years he was a voice crying in the wilderness—
the wilderness in those days being anywhere north of Luton—he came in the end to be the most authoritative single voice in the country, listened to with equal respect in the highest academic circles and in the corridors of power. At the time of his death he was within an ace of seeing all the reforms and ideas for which he had striven so hard and so long finally accepted and put into practice.
Frank Holdsworth was born and brought up in Bradford and, apart from his years of training, first at Cambridge, where he was an exhibitioner, and then at St. George’s Hospital in London, he spent the whole of his professional life in Sheffield. So he was a true Yorkshireman, and made no bones about it; which means that he was uncomplicated, direct, transparently honest,
