Centennial Moment Alexander Gordon Lyle, DDS, FACD Vice Admiral, Dental Corps, US Navy Medal of Honor, Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster Stephen A. Ralls, DDS, EdD, MSD President, American College of Dentists Foundation
The collective Fellowship of the American College of Dentists has encompassed numerous, distinguished leaders from all walks of dentistry. Among this already elite assembly are some whose lives and accomplishments provoke an added sense of awe and amazement. Alexander Gordon Lyle is one of those persons. His list of achievements is truly remarkable. As widely reported in newspapers on the one-year anniversary of Armistice Day, December 11, 1919, Dr. Lyle was one of two Navy dentists selected to receive the Medal of Honor for his service in World War I, the other being Lieutenant Junior Grade Weedon E. Osborne who received the award posthumously. The medal was designed by Tiffany and Co. in 1919. Dr. Lyle and Dr. Osborne are the first and only Navy dentists so recognized.
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On March 13, 1943, Dr. Lyle became the first Navy dentist to be elevated to the rank of Rear Admiral. He also appears to be the first, and perhaps only, Navy dentist to have been retired at the rank of Vice Admiral. This was done through a “tombstone promotion,” which was a process in place at the time where combat-decorated naval officers could be promoted to the next higher rank at retirement. Rear Admiral Lyle was inducted as a Fellow of the American College of Dentists in 1944, apparently while serving as Inspector of Dental Activities for the Navy. Emergency regulations of World War II prohibited large meetings and this policy prevented the College from holding Convocations from 1942 through 1946. To continue functioning under these wartime conditions, Sections
were asked to confer Fellowships locally. Admiral Lyle would have been inducted as Fellow in this manner, most likely in the fall of 1944 by the Washington, DC Section or Maryland Section. He remains the only Fellow of the American College of Dentists to have been awarded the Medal of Honor. Alexander Gordon Lyle was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, on November 12, 1889, to James J. Lyle and Margaret D. MacFarlane. Both parents were of Canadian nativity. In 1912 he graduated from the Baltimore College of Dentistry and three years later, on April 21, 1915, he was appointed Assistant Dental Surgeon in the Navy Dental Corps. Dr. Lyle’s father was a mariner, which may have played a role in his choice to enter the Navy. Although World War I began July 28,
