ENDURING GRATITUDE
A Champion Swimmer Dives Deep At Hotchkiss, William ‘Bill’ McMaster ’58 Struggled to Stay Afloat but Ultimately Prevailed In many ways, Bill McMaster swam his way to Hotchkiss. From the time he clinched his first medal as a freestyle sprinter, a series of fortuitous events led him to Lakeville and ultimately to a career in medicine. B Y W E N DY C A R L S O N
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Y AGE 12, BILL McMASTER
had the tall and lanky physique of a swimmer and was already ranked first nationally in the 60-yard-sprint. In those days, most public indoor pools measured 20 yards in length, and 60-yard sprints were standard. Later, when he competed in 25-yard pools at Hotchkiss and at Yale, McMaster would excel in the 50- and 100yard sprints. But it was in his small local Y.M.C.A. pool on Chicago’s South Side where he first honed the speed, technique, and style that caught the attention of a swim coach named Walter Schlueter. Soft-spoken and circumspect, Schlueter was an Olympic diving coach and a member of the Swimming Hall of Fame. He also had connections, and he would use them to steer McMaster toward Hotchkiss. “He was the magician who changed my life,” says McMaster, who had never heard of Hotchkiss before applying. McMaster went on to attend Yale, earning a B.S. degree in zoology, before graduating from Case Western Reserve with a medical degree in 1966. A year later, while McMaster was in surgical residency at the University of Chicago Billings Hospital, the Vietnam War was underway. He was drafted into the Air Force and stationed in South Carolina. There, he was in charge
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of the emergency room on the base. He fixed the broken bones of airmen and their family members. The brief experience would inspire him to switch his specialty from general surgery to orthopaedic surgery. After the Air Force, McMaster returned to Chicago to continue his residency in general surgery before switching to orthopaedics at the University of California, Irvine where he completed his training. He eventually became a faculty member and served as chair of the Orthopaedic Division. He now resides in Costa Mesa, CA, and is a health services professor in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of California, Irvine. In addition, he is the chief of orthopaedic surgery at Long Beach Veterans Administration Hospital, where he teaches residents and medical students while carrying a full surgery schedule performing hip and knee arthroplasty. McMaster credits Hotchkiss with paving the way for him to become a physician, a dream he had harbored since he was five and had his appendix removed. He was in awe of the surgeon who performed the operation. His grandmother encouraged his interest, providing him with books on anatomy and science throughout his recovery and in the years that followed. But it was his skill in swimming that
It was in his small local Y.M.C.A. pool on Chicago’s South Side where he first honed the speed, technique, and style that caught the attention of a swim coach.
would make his dream a reality. By the time McMaster was a freshman at his public high school, he was earning swimming medals left and right. Schlueter invited him to practice with the all-girls team he was coaching, some of whom were Olympiccaliber athletes. By then, Schlueter knew McMaster was talented, but he also knew
