EMS pioneer, Dr. Reinald Leidelmeyer, lived a long and interesting life. Liedelmeyer was born in 1924 in Jakarta, Indonesia and then grew up in Amsterdam and the Hague, Netherlands. He graduated high school in 1943 and joined the Dutch Resistance. The Gestapo arrested him and sent him to a slave-labor camp in Germany. He was able to pass word to his mother by writing a note about what happened to him on a scrap of paper and passing it through the slats on the railroad cattle car in which he was traveling. Liedelmeyer secured his release after about a year in the camp by coughing in the face of a guard and claiming to have tuberculosis. He arrived home suffering from diphtheria.

Dr. Leidelmeyer graduated from Leiden University Meidcal School in 1950 and immigrated to the United States in 1953. He joined the Army in 1955 and served as a commanding officer in an Army dispensary in Germany. After returning home from the Army, Liedelmeyer worked at a tuberculosis Sanitarium in Charlottesville, Virginia before becoming co-chairman of the Emergency Department at Fairfax Hospital in 1961. He worked for the hospital until 1982.

Dr. Liedelmeyer was passionate about saving lives and recognized the importance of emergency pre-hospital care. He figured that training first responders to stabilize a patient at the scene before turning the patient over to specialist doctors would increase chances of survival.

In 1966 he wrote an article in the Virginia Medical Monthly that outlined six basic requirements for emergency medicine to be regarded as a specialty. After receiving a positive response, he organized the first national meeting of emergency room doctors in 1968. Thirty-two doctors from eighteen states attended the meeting and they declared themselves the American College of Emergency Physicians. This organization now certifies all emergency doctors.

First ACEP Meeting Held in Virginia (above photo)
Dr. Reinald Leidelmeyer of Fairfax, Virginia organized the first national meeting to bring emergency physicians together. The meeting was held at the Marriott Twin Bridges Motel, Arlington, Virginia. ACEP was formed and designated the national association of emergency physicians. First Board of Directors included two Virginian emergency physicians. Dr. Mills (1st row far left) and Dr. Leidelmeyer (2nd row, 4th over from left)

Dr. Leidelmeyer was a member of the federal commission charged with formulating national requirements and training programs for emergency medical technicians and paramedics, and was also instrumental in establishing a national registry. Then, in 1971, he co-organized a regional EMS council of which he was a member through 1976.

He was the first recipient of the James D. Mills Outstanding Contribution to Emergency Medicine Award in 1978. He retired from medicine in 1998, but continued to lecture. Following his retirement from the hospital, Dr. Leidelmeyer established one of the early free-standing emergency clinics.  Members of his staff included some of the paramedics he’d helped train. He died December 20, 2006.

Information in part from Glenn Luedtke and Dr. Leidelmeyer’s obituary.