Harry Z. Mellins
Dr. Harry Z. Mellins was born in 1921, grew up in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City, attended Erasmus Hall High School and graduated from Columbia College in 1941. From 1941 to 1944 he attended the Long Island College of Medicine (which merged with the State University of New York, eventually forming SUNY Downstate Medical Center). In May of 1942, he was commissioned into the Army as a 2nd Lieutenant while continuing his medical studies. In 1944 he was Honorably Discharged although he immediately re-enlisted into the Reserves. The discharge letter indicates he suffered from “compound myopic astigmatism” and was “granted a waiver for defective vision …”, ironic for an expert radiologist with an excellent “eye” for radiographic detail. At the Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn, he completed his internship from 1944 to 1945, and served as Assistant Resident in Radiology from 1945 to 1946. In April of 1946, he was...