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The old Wilford Hall Medical Center at Joint Base San Antonio Lackland is being torn down. Once the flagship of Air Force medicine, the facility has sat vacant for years. Now officials are working to preserve its history.
Big names like Jimmy Doolittle, Bob Hope, and Chuck Yeager passed through the hospital doors, as did U.S. POWs when the North Vietnamese released them. In 1979, the newly-deposed Shah of Iran arrived for cancer treatment, to the chagrin of many San Antonians.
“He was deposed before his plane got out of the airspace. So when he made it here to San Antonio, it was quite the thing, with the protests going on outside,” said Tracy English, chief of history and research for the 37th Training Wing at Joint Base San Antonio Lackland.
“There were a number of things that we could not do,” he added. “No photos of the Shah could be taken in the building — and you couldn't get within a couple of blocks of it. His wife, Farah wasn't too fond of the accommodations.”
Not long after, President Jimmy Carter visited an airman patient at Wilford Hall who had been burned in the aborted hostage rescue attempt in Iran.
Troops injured in the line of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan — whether from gunshot wounds, explosions, or other combat-related injuries — were transported to Wilford Hall for emergency surgery, orthopedic interventions, specialized trauma care and rehabilitation.
'You went there'
Wilford Hall was the first American military hospital to be certified as a Level 1 trauma center. The designation meant it had the resources and expertise to handle the most complex and severe trauma cases, including multiple traumas and life-threatening injuries. It served the public as well as the military community.
“If you got into an accident, it didn't matter who you were,” English explained. “If you needed the level of care that the hospital could provide, you went there.”
Wilford Hall opened in 1957 after the Korean War, as the Air Force expanded its footprint to counter the Soviet Union. It served as a hub for training, research and innovation, and was the birthplace of more than a hundred thousand babies.
The hospital changed military medicine, giving rise to critical care air transport teams, which provide advanced critical care during the transport of ill or injured patients via air. The teams now play a crucial role in military and civilian medical evacuation missions. Wilford Hall Medical Center researchers also pioneered Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) technology, a form of life support that allows the heart and lungs to heal.
The hospital is famous for firsts. In 1989, surgeons at Wilford Hall performed San Antonio's first successful liver transplant, which was also a first for a Department of Defense medical facility. A team of military and civilian doctors at Wilford Hall performed the first-ever female hand transplant in the U.S. in 2010.
In the early 2000s, the Defense Department began moving resources and patients away from the aging Wilford Hall. An extension with the same name was built nearby to house outpatient and clinical services.
But some argued that the hospital community lost something during the move. The layout of the new Wilford Hall is more open, with four wings connected by an airport-style concourse. During the changeover, some workers moved across the street or to outlying buildings.
“It doesn't feel the same,” said 59th Medical Wing historian Nicholas Brace. “Because when you're in that one big hospital, everybody's there. You can see all the patients, there's all this life happening around you. Now it’s kind of spaced out.”
Historians Brace and English said many in the Air Force community have asked for bricks and other artifacts to remember the old Wilford Hall. The 59th Medical Wing is working to preserve the building’s legacy. The glass from the chapel is on display in the new building, while the wall of handprints from the pediatrics department has been saved and put into storage.
A slow demolition
The old Wilford Hall hosted its last surgery seven years ago. But although the demolition contract was awarded in 2018, the building’s teardown has been delayed by funding and other considerations.
The old Wilford Hall had its own supply of power and water, and served as a miniature utility hub for parts of the Joint Base San Antonio- Lackland. The first part of the demolition involved disconnecting it from the grid and rerouting those utilities. The structure itself presented unusual challenges, too.
“You can't pull the building down like you would a casino in Vegas, because it was built for the Cold War and designed to withstand rocket blasts,” Brace said. “So you can't just hit the girders and have it implode on itself. You have to beat it down with wrecking balls.”
But hazardous materials complicate that process. Workers are methodically removing asbestos, polychlorinated biphenyls, lead-based paint and mercury from the building’s interior.
“We try to do as much as we can from the inside out,” said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Mick Nyenhuis. “But there has been some demolition and abatement that we can only do from the outside. Water is used to make sure that dust doesn't escape the area.”
The Environmental Protection Agency is monitoring the work. Once the site is leveled, it will be restored to provide additional parking and more than 25 acres of green space with a track.
