The Place -
"The Fitzsimons Army Medical Center (formerly the Fitzsimons Army Hospital) was a medical facility of the United States military during the 20th century located on 577 acres (2.3 km?) in Aurora, Colorado. The facility closed in 1999 and the grounds are currently being redeveloped for civilian use as the Fitzsimons Medical Campus. The facility was founded by the United States Army during World War I arising from the need to treat the large number of casualties from chemical weapons in Europe. Denver's reputation as a prime location for the treatment of tuberculosis led local citizens to lobby the Army on behalf of Denver as the site for the new hospital. Army Hospital 21, as it was first called, was formally dedicated in the autumn of 1918 in Aurora, which at the time had a population of less than 1,000. In July 1920, the facility was formally renamed the Fitzsimons Army Hospital after Lt. William T. Fitzsimons, the first U.S. casualty in World War I. The facility was used heavily during World War II to treat returning casualties and became one of the Army's premier medical training centers. In the 1950s, Dwight Eisenhower received treatment at the facility three separate times for his heart condition while he was president. In September 1955, while on vacation at his in-laws' house in Denver, he suffered a myocardial infarction and was placed in an oxygen tent at the facility. In 2000, a suite of rooms on hospital's eighth floor was restored to appear as it did when Eisenhower was recovering there. United States Senator and 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry was born at the facility on December 11, 1943, while his father was receiving treatment for tuberculosis. In July 1995, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission recommended the closure of the facility, with the exception of the Edgar J. McWhethy Army Reserve Center, and the closure was completed in 1999. The $744-million redevelopment of the facility into civilian use includes the construction of the University of Colorado Hospital's $110-million Anschutz Outpatient Pavilion, and the $509-million Children's Hospital. The medical campus also includes the Ben Nighthorse Campbell Center for Native American Research, named in honor of the U.S. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado." (from (
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Fitzsimons was transferred to the University of Colorado School of Medicine in 1997. It is still the Fitzsimmons Building, just not an Army Hospital. The area is now the Anschutz Medical Campus where more information may be found at (
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The Person - Lt. William T. Fitzsimons
"On September 7, 1917, however, the blood of the first American officer killed in action ran red right onto French soil. This fallen officer was Lt. William T. Fitzsimons, holder of two degrees from the University of Kansas. The war had finally come to KU.
William T. Fitzsimons was born in Burlington, Kansas, on April 18, 1889, and attended St. Mary’s College in St. Mary’s, Kansas, before transferring to the KU School of Medicine in 1908. Two years later, he had earned his Bachelor of Arts degree, and in 1912, received his MD. After graduation, he spent a year at St. Mary’s Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, followed by a 14-month stint at Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. In September 1914, Dr. Fitzsimons felt compelled to travel to Europe to assist, in whatever way he could, those soldiers currently being ravaged by the early battles of the Great War. He spent six months treating the wounded at hospitals in England, and then crossed over to war-torn Belgium to perform similar services, before returning home in late 1915.
Back in Kansas, the 27-year-old Fitzsimons accepted surgical and teaching positions at the KU School of Medicine. But his homecoming was short. As soon as the United States declared war on Germany, Fitzsimons joined the Army Medical Reserve Corps. He was quickly commissioned a first lieutenant, and in July 1917, steamed back across the Atlantic for France to resume his medical duties, this time in service of his own country and his own countrymen. “His voluntary return to France was made in spite of the fact that he had seen the Great War in all of its hideousness,” explained Dean Sudler in an article for the Graduate Magazine. “He could have no feeling of romance, for he knew the grimness of the struggle upon which he entered; yet he felt that there was definite work which he could do; and perhaps the call came more clearly to him because of this former experience and knowledge.”
The Army assigned Fitzsimons to a group of doctors called the Harvard Unit. He would serve with the unit for less than two weeks. On the night of September 7, 1917, Fitzsimons was killed during a German air attack on his field hospital. He had become KU’s (and America’s) first casualty of the war.
“The attack could not have been a mistake,” a fellow soldier, Maj. Dr. Paul Woolley, later recalled, for “there was nothing of military value near the hospital tent in which he was working.” And according to the Kansas City Star, “The nature of the attack that killed the young officer aroused the nation and enlistment soared,” especially after former president Theodore Roosevelt drew the country’s attention to Fitzsimons’ death with a scathing, front-page editorial that appeared in the September 17, 1917, edition of the Star. Denouncing Germany’s “calculated brutality,” her “deliberate policy of wickedness,” and her “systematic campaign of murder against hospitals and hospital ships,” Roosevelt’s call to arms inspired untold thousands to join up and avenge the martyred doctor.
In a moving eulogy, Dean Sudler praised Fitzsimons’ sacrifice and charitable spirit, saying “any country is safe when such high ideals are held and practiced by its young men.” He further acknowledged that this loss “brings home keenly to the University of Kansas that the liberty of our country was again in jeopardy and that men were giving their all in order that democracy might live; and the future of a free country be safe-guarded.”
KU Chancellor Frank Strong offered similarly moving words in a letter to Fitzsimons’ mother, Mrs. J. T. Fitzsimons, expressing his sincerest condolences and the University’s gratitude for her son’s willingness to “give his life for the freedom of all humanity.” The chancellor praised Fitzsimons’ selflessness as indisputable evidence of how “our country has assumed the spiritual leadership of the world.” Strong also hoped that, in the future, all young men would be as willing as the fallen doctor to “feel the promptings of loyalty and respond so nobly to the call of their country.”
Almost immediately, KU administrators, faculty, and students began raising money to commemorate the life William T. Fitzsimons gave for his country and to symbolize all he meant to the University. The fund’s organizers eventually decided that the best way to honor the doctor’s life would be to provide for his sister Catherine’s future education. Chancellor Strong wanted to do more, though, so he wired the Surgeon General to inquire about naming a government hospital in honor of Dr. Fitzsimons.
In 1920, the Department of the Army changed the name of Army General Hospital No. 21 in Aurora, Colorado, to Fitzsimons General Hospital. And two years after that, the William T. Fitzsimons Memorial Fountain at 12th and Paseo in Kansas City, Missouri, was dedicated to the memory of the first American WWI casualty. His Army buddy, Maj. Woolley, commander of the newly christened William Fitzsimons American Legion post, unveiled the fountain before a crowd of over 5,000 friends, family, and fellow citizens on May 30, 1922." (excerpted from (
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