Five rings of Musashi.

Abstract

Mr. President, fellow members of the American Orthopaedic Association, distinguished guests, ladies, and gentlemen: I want to thank you for the honor you have bestowed upon me. This is a proud moment, and, like my predecessors, I am both humbled and excited by the task you have set for me. The humbling part, by the way, came quickly, as soon as I started preparing for this speech. There is nothing quite so intimidating as going back through the history of our Association and reviewing the thoughtful commentaries of its past leaders. But as I did so, and as I took stock of our current situation, my excitement began to build. I found, in my reading, that our history as an association is as rich and diverse as the worlds of science and medicine, paralleling the changes in our society and nation. It is replete with the timely words and exceptional deeds of renowned medical and scientific thinkers and scholars who led this Association from its beginnings, back in 1887, with the election of its first President, Dr. Virgil Gibney—although in those days we were considered nothing more than “fitters of apparatus,” according to our fourth President, Dr. DeForest Willard19. Then the American Orthopaedic Association entered the twentieth century—a century of extraordinary discovery and remarkable advances in orthopaedic surgery6. Stu Weinstein, in his 1997 Presidential Address, observed: “At its inception, The American Orthopaedic Association had only one purpose, which was unmistakable and unambiguous: the advancement of orthopaedic science and art, a goal aimed at the establishment of our specialty as a recognized branch of medicine.”18 This original purpose has changed and expanded over our 112 years of existence. Our current mission statement, adopted last year, reads as follows: To build our second century of leadership and …