Frederick C. Cordes Eye Society - Alumni Society of the Department of Ophthalmology, UCSF

General Information

Welcome to the webpage of the Frederick C. Cordes Eye Society. This organization was formed to foster and encourage active participation by alumni in the teaching programs of the Department of Ophthalmology of the University of California, San Francisco. Please see our History, below:

Alumni are encouraged to participate in the Annual Scientific Meeting. The Society annually puts on a high quality, non-biased program for the continuing education of the community practicing ophthalmologists, Alumni, residents and academic staff. Traditionally, we try to hold the meetings in early April. The scope and content of the program is varied from year. Our programs always include the latest information on glaucoma, retina, cataract and plastics and we occasionally have Basic Science speakers selected by our Vice President/Program Coordinator. The Cordes Society’s program is unique in that it always has three “named” lectures each year: The Hogan Lecture, The Williams Lecture, and the Hearst Lecture. This program qualifies for AMA Category 1 credits. Please see our Meetings, below.

Please contact our past president, Cordes Administrator, Danielle Pickett with questions or comments by emailing her at cordes@vision.ucsf.edu. The documents and pictures of these WebPages print best if you format your printer for “landscape.”

If you have a facebook account, please click and login here to join the Frederick C. Cordes Eye Society group on Facebook for more updates (here's how to get a facebook account if you don't already have one).

Meetings

2008:
  -Cordes Reunion Classes
  -Call For Papers
  -2008 SCIENTIFIC MEETING PROGRAM
  -Cordes Society Reception, AAO, Atlanta- November 9, 2008

2009:
  -Cordes Society Reception, AAO, San Francisco, Saturday, October 24, 2009
  -2009 Cordes Society Member Letter
  -2009 Cordes Cordes PROGRAM Final
  -Cordes Society 50th Anniversary Meeting Call for Papers

2010:
  -12th annual Residents' Day & 51st annual Scientific Meeting, March 11-12, 2010
  -Cordes Society Reception, AAO Chicago, Sunday, October, 17, 2010

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History

In the winter of 1948, as the Medical School community (and America) was coming back to normal after the end of World War II, Dr. Michael J. Hogan sent out an inquiry to former residents about having a reunion of the U.C. Eye Residents. The handwritten rough draft of his letter survives (Fig. 1 and Fig. 2). Carbon copies of the final draft have been found and date the beginnings of Dr. Hogan’s ideas to February 16, 1948 (Fig. 3).

Having received many favorable responses to his initial proposal, Dr. Hogan (a.k.a. “Uncle Mike”) drafted a formal letter to all of the known residents of the U.C. Medical School program (rough draft handwritten notes are seen on Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 along with a list of residents). He worked from a partially handwritten list of the then known U.C. residents (Fig. 6 and Fig. 7).

His final draft was typewritten on August 17, 1948 (no word processors!) and we do not have an original, but, some carbon copies of his original invitations still survive, one of which is reproduced here (Fig. 8).

Of course, we all must remember that U.C.S.F. medical center was not a “campus” of the University of California at that time, it was governed by a Provost, and considered a division of U.C. Berkeley. The Berkeley campus conferred any undergraduate degrees at that time.

That original meeting of the University of California Eye Residents Association was held as scheduled, on September 11, 1948, and was considered a great success. In succeeding years, the process for holding the meeting and the resident responsibilities for organizing the meeting became more refined. For example, in 1953, when second year resident Vernon Lightfoot, M.D. was the resident in charge of getting the meeting together, his letter was a simple, mimeographed, form letter that allowed for easy responding by potential attendees such as Dr. Harrington (Fig. 9). By the time Dr. Mullen was responding for the meeting, it had boiled down to returning a simple postcard for reserving your attendance (Fig. 10 and Fig. 11).

By the mid-1950s the rosters of the University of California Eye Residents looked like the one reproduced in Fig. 12, 13, 14.

Over the years after Dr. Hogan started the meetings in 1948, Dr. Cordes’ role in this meeting for the residents became of more importance, not only because of his faithful attendance, but also because he would later consistently arrange for the banquets to be held at the Bohemian Club in San Francisco, among other things. When Dr. Cordes retired as Chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology, in 1959, members felt that the University of California Residents Association should be renamed in his honor because he had trained or was chairman during the training of all of the known graduates of the program at that time. He was, also, the first chairman of the “Department” of Ophthalmology. Previously, Ophthalmology had been known as a “Division” in the Department of Surgery of the School of Medicine. Since 1959, therefore, this organization has been known as the Frederick C. Cordes Eye Society. (also see Historical References).

In 1999, we celebrated the 40th reunion of the Frederick C. Cordes Eye Society (see Scrapbook Images). The actual 50th anniversary of the University of California Eye Residents Association occurred in 1998.

Therefore, historically, the upcoming 2008 meeting will actually be the 60th reunion of the University of California Residents Association. In 2009, the annual meeting will be the official 50th reunion of the Frederick C. Cordes Eye Society.

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