David Grant Medical Center heals through the decades

David Grant Medical Center started life as the Fairfield-Suisun Army Air Base Hospital, or, more informally, as the Station Hospital.

1966: On July 1, David Grant Medical Center was named after Maj. Gen. David Grant, the first air surgeon in the Army Air Force in 1941.

Among the base’s first buildings in 1943 was a seven-ward, 125-bed base hospital whose site was located in a eucalyptus grove to provide some concealment in case of a Japanese air attack. The first doctors arrived at the hospital in May 1943, including the first base surgeon, Lt. Col. Archibald Laird.

Up until July 1943, when the base and the hospital opened, all surgery was done at Hamilton Field. On Aug. 6, 1943, the first major operation was performed at the local air base hospital. It was acute appendicitis and the operation was successful.

During its first year, the base’s medical care was in the hands of 30 officers, 130 enlisted personnel and 15 civilians, who also provided medical processing for anyone shipping out for the Pacific theater. By the end of the war, the hospital was also moving about 800 patients a month through the base after they were brought in on C-54 t ransports from Pacific battlefields.

The wartime staff even included some African American doctors, according to the Travis Heritage Center’s exhibit on the hospital, something that was unusual since most American units were still segregated.

January 1945 saw a name change to the 4167th U.S. Air Force Hospital, with C-54 Skymasters assigned to bring patients from overseas. Among those were 23 recently liberated and emaciated POWs from Bilibid Prison Camp in the Philippines, survivors of Bataan and Corregidor.

June 1945 saw work start on the construction of a 670-bed aerial debarkation hospital facility and the reconstruction of the original 150-bed hospital in anticipation of the invasion of Japan, but the end of the war prompted the military to stop construction of bot h projects.

The Pentagon changed its mind a year later and work started on a revised plan that called for bui lding a new $4.5 m illion hospital on the hill overlooking the 60th Airlift Wing headquarters to be called U.S. Air Force Hospital Travis in 1958 a fter the base changed its name to Travis Air Force Base.

The four-story structure was opened in May 1949 a nd subsequent additions gave the hospital a 470-bed capacity to handle not only thousands of casualties from the Korean War, but also some French casualties from the Indochina War.

Third Division infantryman William Strowbridge, who was wounded in the leg in April 1951, remembered arriving at Travis, being carried on a bus filled with litters to the hospital and his treatment there in his account preserved by the Travis Herit age Center.

“When they carried me off the plane, I saw nothing but brown hills and I asked if we were in the desert. Somebody explained we were at Travis,” Strowbridge wrote. “A kind lady placed a tray of real food by my bed. A volunteer appeared and asked of I’d like to telephone or telegraph my parents. Everybody was real nice.”

Between 1950 a nd 1951, an average of 5,000 patients per month arrived at the hospital via aeromedical evacuation.

By the end of 1961, when another wave of building engulfed the hospital, its staff had expanded to about 1,000 people. In 1966-67, a

$700,000 addition was made to the hospital, which included a dental clinic and 100 more beds for the casualty staging unit, making it the largest in the Military Airlift Command and one of the most modern in the Air Force.

The hospital got its present name on July 1, 1966, when it was named after Maj. Gen. David Grant, the first air surgeon in the Army Air Force in 1941. He is considered the father of the modern Air Force medica l services.

David Grant took its next quantum leap forward when ground was broken for a $193 m illion new hospital south of Air Base Parkway in 1983. Patients and medical staff moved into their new home in December 1988 a nd on Dec. 15, 1988 – only hours after patients were moved in, 9½-pound Steven Joseph Mox entered the world at 5:30 p.m. to become its f irst birth.

The present four-story hospital was three times the size of its predecessor, encompassing 808,475 square feet with 3,662 rooms, approximately 300 i npatient and 75 aeromedical staging flight beds and 53 dental treatment rooms. Its design included the capacity to withstand major earthquakes and operate for up to a week using only internal utility capabilities.

David Grant is now the second-largest readiness platform in the Air Force and the largest in Air Mobility Command, sending its doctors and medical professionals to deployed hospitals throughout the world. It is also a major medical training facility with training programs that include internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, family practice and dentistry.

David Grant is still changing to keep up with the Air Force’s needs. It is in the second phase of a massive, three-phase modernizat ion effort.

It started a facility-wide modernization a decade ago that saw $54 m illion spent on Phase I work alone, that included a new cardiovascular operating room and a new ophthalmology clinic. It was followed by the $61 m illion second phase of its threephase multimillion-dollar modernization, which included a facelift for the entire emergency department as well as renovation and reorganization of a half-dozen clinics, completed in 2014.