Jay Phelan

Yes

College: Univ. of Penn.

Med School: Univ. of Med. & Dentistry of NJ

Internship: Northwestern Memorial, Chicago

Military: Naval Flight Surgeon Class 123, graduating in April of 1970. Assigned to Carrier Air Wing 11 in San Diego, and deployed twice to Vietnam on the USS Kitty Hawk.

Residency: Otolaryngology at the Naval Medical Center, Oakland CA. Finished May 1976.

Marriage: in 1974, in mid-residency, Bonnie Brasfield, an Alabama native, and I were married at the Miramar Naval Air Station.

Further military service: Two years as ENT Department Head at Naval Medical Center, Great Lakes IL.

Next: left the Navy in August of 1978 and moved to Santa Barbara to take a job in the ENT department of Sansum Medical Clinic.

Next: In 1992 I was unexpectedly offered a Navy job in Pensacola FL, where I first started my Navy career in 1969. It was as Head, Department of Otorhinolaryngology, at the Naval Aerospace Medical Center. This required leaving Santa Barbara (painful), returning to active duty (painless) in Jan 1993, and staying at NAMI for 12 years (wonderful). I retired from the Navy in September 2005.

Next: I was immediately hired as a Flight Surgeon working for NASA, but I'm actually paid by the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, and contracted to NASA by Wyle Life Sciences (recently changed to Wyle Integrated Science and Engineering Group). I had to move to Houston while Bonnie stayed in Birmingham where we had moved right after I retired from the Navy. At the end of 2007 I went part-time, and moved back to Birmingham permanently. My current work takes me to Russia twice a year to serve as the flight surgeon for our astronauts in training in Star City. I don't know how much longer they'll need me to do this, but I made sure I wouldn't be in Russia at reunion time. I head back on Oct. 22nd.

I have far better college stories!