(continued from page 29)
really cautious and shine my light on the medical bag, saying ‘Hello,
it’s the doctor.’ But I never had any trouble. I was well treated,” he
recalled.
cember of 1952 to December of 1953 at the Kunsan Air B ase. It was
a big base with about 12,000 men. They were flying F84’s all day
and B26 bombers all night.”
After a year in Letcher County, another young physician took Dr.
Urbach’s place and he traveled to New Orleans to work as an intern
at Charity Hospital in 1948.
Mercifully, Dr. Urbach was stationed away from the fighting, and
he didn’t see many casualties the way an Army doctor would. But,
there were shrapnel wounds, aircraft fire wounds and accidents,
and all sorts of illnesses too.
“That was a good internship. I rotated through Surgery, Internal
Medicine, OB, Orthopedics, ENT. And New Orleans was great. I
learned how to fish there, and I learned about Dixieland music,” said
Dr. Urbach. “One of my fellow interns came late to supper saying
he had the best time because he’d wandered into this place with a
Dixieland band. He said I had to go with him next time. I wasn’t
sure, because it was a three hour show. I didn’t know if I could take
three hours. We went for 90 minutes, and it was wonderful. The
next time, I was there when they opened.”
Dr. Urbach’s time in New Orleans would be as short as his time
in Letcher County and soon he was travelling back to Kentucky
to work at Louisville General Hospital where he would spend two
years training in Medicine.
After two years, he moved to another internship at The Ohio
State University in Columbus where he expanded his knowledge
with rotations in Psychiatry, Pathology, the medical wards, Hematology, Dermatology and Endocrinology. Following that crash
course of specialties, Dr. Urbach completed his internship and
almost immediately joined the Air Force. He soon received orders
to head to the Far East.
Because he was in medical school during World War II, Dr.
Urbach had been deferred. However, prior to the Korean War,
Congress passed the Selective Service Act of 1948 allowing doctors
to be drafted. Upon finishing his residency, Dr. Urbach turned in
applications to the Army, Navy and Air Force. The Air Force took
him, but he would have been drafted even if he had never turned
in an application.
“They sent us to school in Montgomery, Alabama, for five weeks
where we learned how to wear a uniform, salute and get out of a
burning airplane. Then I was stationed in South Korea from De30
LOUISVILLE MEDICINE
“These were mostly young healthy guys. We had the usual stuff
like pneumonia and diarrhea. We had a case of polio. We had a guy
with tetanus who missed the immunizations, and we had our fair
share of gonorrhea. They needed medical care, so we gave it to them.”
The war ended at the end of summer 1953, and Dr. Urbach’s work
slowed down in result. During his deployment, he happened to get
pretty good at table tennis. In the last months of his time overseas,
he would win a doubles tournament in South Korea and even travel
to Japan to continue the competition.
“We had a table on base and I got pretty good. We won a couple
rounds in that Japanese tournament too. I had such a good partner
that he went on and won the singles tournament,” Dr. Urbach said.
“Don’t tell the Air Force, but I actually had a wonderful time. I got
to see a part of the world I’d never have seen otherwise. I enjoyed
myself thoroughly.”
After Korea, Dr. Urbach was stationed in Southern California in
the Mojave Desert. “We were 100 miles from Los Angeles. It looked
desolate to me when I first got there, but I learned to like it. The
air base was built out there because there’s only like five days of the
year that it’s cloudy. It was an interesting place.”
Dr. Urbach left the Air Force as a captain and briefly considered
practicing medicine in Florida. At the time, his sister was living in
West Palm Beach. But he didn’t feel comfortable and left after just
a six week visit. It was 1955, and time to return to Kentucky. After
arriving in Louisville for the third time in his life, Dr. Urbach began
a practice at the Medical Arts Building on Eastern Parkway. He
would stay in that practice for the next 38 years.
(continued on page 32)