Members of the Board
The fifth biographical sketch in theseries on the Members of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees follows:
DR. JOHN F. GILE '16, as Life Trustee of Dartmouth and North Country surgeon, carries on a tradition established by his father, Dr. John M. Gile 'B7, of service to the College and the people in the region round about it. The careers of the two men are comparable in their association with the Medical School, the College, and a New England practice.
The second Dr. Gile, or "J" as he was called to distinguish him from his father, received a very early training in the duties of both a doctor and a college trustee. From the age of 13, he accompanied his father, first as driver and later as assistant, on calls to patients from the Canadian border to Bellows Falls. Through this experience he obtained a practical training in medicine and a thorough acquaintance with the country and people that he put to good use when he, himself, became the "country doctor."
On the long drives to patients, Dr. Gile was sometimes an auditor to conferences on College affairs between his father, one of the College trustees, and College officials—travel time often being the onlv part of the day the busy doctor had free for College business. When Dr. Gile became in his turn Life Trustee in 1937, he brought to the office a sound understanding of its requirements.
Dr. Gile was born in 1893 in Tewksbury, Mass., where his father was assistant to the doctor in charge of the Tewksbury Infirmary. The family moved to Hanover in 1896 and Dr. Gile's father took over a local practice and began his teaching career in the Medical School of which he later became Dean. Upon Dr. Gile's graduation from Dartmouth, where he had been manager of the football team and a member of Sphinx and Kappa Kappa Kappa, he entered the Medical School and after two years there went to the Harvard Medical School to receive his M.D. degree. Following his marriage to Nettie E. Edmunds in 1922, Dr. Gile returned to Hanover as a member of the surgical staff of the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital and as Instructor in Anatomy at the Medical School. His North Country career had begun.
After three years as Instructor in Anatomy, Dr. Gile was appointed Instructor in Physical Diagnosis, a post which he held until 1935 when he was reappointed Instructor in Anatomy. Since 1939 he has been Professor of Clinical Surgery and Acting Medical Director. It was with his help that the Hitchcock Clinic, one of the few examples of this type of medical organization, was founded in Hanover in 1927.
Dr. Gile, who is considered one of New England's ranking surgeons, is a member of the American Medical Association, the American College of Surgeons, the Eastern Surgical Club, the New England Obstetrical and Gynecological Society, the American Association for the Treatment of Trauma, and the Founders' Group of the American Board of Surgery. He has been Secretary of the New England Surgical Club since 1937 and is Vice President of the New Hampshire Medical Society. He is also a member of the Rotary Club and served as his College Class Agent from 1917 to 1919. He received an honorary A.M. from Dartmouth in 1937 and, as a Life Trustee, serves on the Trustees' Executive Committee.
The doctor's love of outdoor life is one of his outstanding characteristics. From his childhood, when he used occasionally to slip away from home for the day to help the men in a lumber camp, he has been an expert woodsman and a welcome member of the woods fraternity. His favorite recreations are naturally hunting and fishing.
The Gile family connection with Dartmouth, which began with Dr. Gile's father and continued through him and his brother, Archie '17, became of threegeneration standing when the doctor's son, John F. Jr., recently graduated from Dartmouth as a member of the Class of 1945. Dr. Gile has three more children, Jane, Amos, now in the Navy, and Nancy.
