First I would like to express my deep thanks and gratitude to the Society of Surgical Oncology for the esteemed privilege of serving as the 39th James Ewing Lecturer. Thirty years ago, I attended my first James Ewing meeting (New York, 1957) as a guest of Jack E. White, MD (Memorial Hospital Fellow, 1949 to 1951), a colleague and one of my mentors. Cornelius P. Rhoads, MD, director of Memorial Hospital, New York, from 1940 to 1959, was the Ewing lecturer that year.
Although I did not know Dr James Ewing, I had the opportunity to speak on numerous occasions with his only son, James Halsted Ewing, MD, a friend and medical school classmate of Guy Robbins, MD (Northwestern University, Chicago, 1936). The younger Dr Ewing worked in the Strang Cancer Prevention Clinic when I was a fellow at Memorial Hospital (1957 to 1959). He was also an Amherst College