Kilgore, Donald E., 1922-2011

Donald Kilgore, M.D. Donald Edgar Kilgore (1922-2011) was born in 1922 in Asheville, North Carolina. His father's business took the young family to both South and North Carolina, and to Texas during the Depression years. In the early 1930's, Kilgore and his brother stayed a year in an isolated Baptist boarding school in coastal North Carolina. When his parents finally settled in Detroit, the boys joined them and Kilgore spent his high school years there. He attended a junior college for two years and then joined the United States Navy in 1942 at the beginning of World War II. He was nineteen.

Kilgore's college years made him eligible to be an aviation cadet. He became a patrol plane commander and flew 81 combat and civic missions. After three years of wartime service, he returned to attend the University of Michigan. Upon graduation from medical school in 1950, Kilgore became an intern at a Detroit hospital. When the Korean War started in 1951, he volunteered and completed three more years in the Navy. In six years, he had seen service in two wars.

When he left the Navy, Kilgore realized that his two great loves, after his family, were medicine and flying. At that time the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico was the center of aviation medicine. He left his family in Rhode Island and came to New Mexico to interview for a position with the clinic. He decided during his one day in Albuquerque that Lovelace would be a good place to start his career. Dr. Kilgore came to the growing Lovelace Clinic in 1953 and gave that institution nearly four decades of service before his retirement in 1992. A critical figure in the institution's history, Dr. Kilgore served as President and Chief Executive of The Lovelace Medical Center in the period 1969-1975.

From the guide to the Donald E. Kilgore Oral History Collection, 1964-2001, (New Mexico Health Historical Collection, UNM Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center.)