ACOFP: OUR CONTINUING HISTORY 135 Leadership appointed as the regimental surgeon and flight surgeon for the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment at Fort Bliss, Texas. A native Texan, Dr. Wiseman also had a distinguished leadership career in Texas medical politics, holding many offices within the state’s osteopathic associations from speaker to president. His mentor was the iconic T. Eugene Zachary DO, FACOFP dist., the only person in osteopathic history to hold the office of speaker in the Texas Osteopathic Medical Association, the Texas ACOFP, ACOFP national, and AOA all at the same time. Dr. Wiseman replaced Dr. Zachary as ACOFP speaker when Dr. Zachary left the position in 2002, and he remained in that position until he became a member of the Board of Governors. Under Dr. Wiseman’s leadership, ACOFP would keep all the osteopathic residencies functioning and set about working to help most of them make the transition to the SAS by obtaining osteopathic recognition — a key component to preserve osteopathic heritage as members of the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). During his tenure, there would be a modest increase not only in new residencies but with established residencies, both DO and MD, obtaining osteopathic recognition and defying the prediction of a devastating decrease. Dr. Wiseman was passionate about increasing student and resident numbers and was able to visit schools in 11 states, spending a lot of time on the road and running through airports — an experience that, he happily noted, saw him drop quite a few pounds. Those experiences did much to increase his understanding of colleges, hospitals, and ACOFP chapters in parts of the country that he had only read about in board reports, books, and travel magazines. His presidential year was marked by uncertainty and epic change for both AOA and ACOFP. The speed of the ACGME/AOA reorganization required by the five-year timeline stressed lines of communication and longtime relationships. One important relationship affected was between the ACOFP Board of Governors and the American Osteopathic Board of Family Medicine (AOBFP). AOBFP was to be assimilated into AOA and would forfeit its bank account, offices, and autonomy to come under the direction of the Bureau of Osteopathic Specialists and the desertification arm of the AOA, which was one of the principal parties in agreeing to the merger. ACOFP, on the other hand, had originally been a vocal opponent of the move to a Single Accreditation System, which sowed the seeds of mistrust between the two organizations. The differences would eventually be resolved in the years that followed, but it deeply perplexed Dr. Wiseman that family medicine did not have a unified front entering this historic time of epic change and transition. 2018–2019 DUANE G. KOEHLER, DO, FACOFP dist. Oklahoma When asked to explain the theme for his presidential year, Dr. Koehler answered quickly and decisively in a single word: survival. As president-elect the previous August, he had been presented with the unexpected impending retirement of ACOFP’s eighteen-year seasoned and highly respected executive director, Peter L. Schmelzer. This came during a time of monumental change for the college on many fronts. There was not only change within osteopathic family medicine postgraduate education, but the entire osteopathic graduate
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