Bal Harbour-Awards/Howard K. Edwards Award, 1972

Series I, Historical Files, consists of a variety of files containing information relevant to the organization’s history previous to 1960. A complete detailed history of the organization can be found in the book Doctors in the Sky by Robert J. Benford. The files are grouped into three sections. The first section contains general subject files arranged alphabetically. The second section contains the correspondence of Dr. Thomas Sutherland. Dr. Sutherland served as Secretary-Treasurer for the AMA for many years. During this time he amassed a great many correspondence files. The third section contains the Benford Old Journal Files, which is a collection of Robert J. Benford’s office files. They are organized chronologically from June 1954 to August 1959.

Series II, Annual Meetings, takes up the greatest bulk of the collection. The series spans 62 years from 1929 to 1991. Each meeting’s files generally consist of Awards, Committees, Correspondence, Exhibitors, and Hotel Arrangements. Researchers will find that the earlier and later years’ files are very sparse while the middle years are quite full. In general, the Awards files are complete for the years of 1971-1975, except that no file was provided for the Boothby Award in 1974. It is unknown whether the Award was given that year. Furthermore, for consistency, all available Flight Nurse Award files can now be found in FSC-22, The Flight Nurses Section of the AsMA Archives. Any Flight Nurse Award files that were previously housed in FSC-21, have been removed to FSC-22.

Series III, General Administration, consists of items that are not historical in nature and do not pertain to an annual meeting. This series is organized alphabetically by main subject area. Categories of documents include abstracts of papers, bibliography projects, articles, biographies of officers (collected by Robert Benford for Doctors in the Sky), correspondence, audits, dealings with aeronautical agencies, and dealings with publishing and insurance companies.

Series IV, Publications, consists of monographs published or collected by the members of the Aerospace Medical Association in connection with their research activities. This series is organized chronologically.