Dr. David Cowie, who had been chairman since the formulation of the department in 1920, died on January 27, 1940. The W. K. Kellogg Foundation provided $100,000 to assist in financing complete reorganization of the department. Dr. Charles McKann was appointed chairman of the department. He assumed his new responsibilities in July of 1941.
The revitalization of the department materialized during McKann's period of administration, and in 1944 James Wilson came to Ann Arbor from Boston to take over the chairmanship.
In the twenty-three-year period under Wilson, 1944-67, the 1914 Contagious Hospital was abandoned and its patients transferred to isolation cubicles in the pediatric wards of the Main Hospital. Research activities were greatly expanded, utilizing space in the Kresge Clinical Research complex assigned to the department.
The long-standing desire of the Medical School faculty to have separate and adequate hospital facilities for the care of children was energetically supported by Wilson, who lost no opportunity to urge the necessity for the move and to seek the necessary financial support. Ultimately this goal was accomplished, but the modern pediatric hospital, the generous gift of Charles Mott of Flint, was not completed and occupied until after Dr. Wilson's retirement in 1967. The research laboratories in that building are named for him.
Dr. William Oliver was selected to be Dr. Wilson's successor as chairman of this now vigorously active department. The James L. Wilson Laboratories, the Charles S. Mott Children's Hospital, the Children's Cardiac Study Unit, and the Holden Perinatal Research Laboratories provide important segments of a "Children's Medical Center." Support of strong faculty representatives of other disciplines concerned with children continues to expand the potential of optimal patient care and of teaching of trainees in problems of the pediatric age group.
The departmental staff is active not only on the campus in Ann Arbor but also at Wayne County General Hospital and its outpatient clinic in Eloise.
Fred J. Hodges
The University of Michigan, an Encyclopedic Survey Supplement, Pages 200, 201
