`  ==A. E. (Ted) Hill== Hi again! Thanks for your note. I am pleased to hear you plan to do more on the Beebe article and have ordered David Snow's book (yes, it has some interesting details about Beebe - especially about his love of Winnie the Pooh - I'll leave it at that, as I don't want to spoil the story for you). I got my copy from England too - but it only took a week or ten days to get way out here in the wilds of northern Queensland - so you shouldn't have a very long wait.   A. E. (Ted) Hill was my father - his full name was Alfred Edward Hill - but all his friends and family referred to him as ``Ted``. I don't think it matters much how he is referred to but he preferred A. E. (Ted) Hill - he didn't like the Alfred particularly - probably because it was his father's first name too. Please excuse me if I ramble on a bit about him - I just hope it doesn't sound too much like boasting but I should tell you a bit about him, as he was a remarkable man in his own right and it may help you get a bit of the ambience of the ``crowd`` Beebe gathered around him in Simla, Trinidad. When Dad was young he designed, built and flew a new kind of gyrocopter and several gliders and founded the first ``Montreal Light Airplane Club,`` which was active for some years. He wanted to go to university and become an aeronautical engineer but my grandfather refused to help him unless he did something ``useful`` like medicine or law - so he did medicine and determined he would excel at it.   He went to McGill (Canada's premier medical school) and took degrees in medicine and surgery before WWII broke out, when he joined the airforce and did a degree in aviation medicine. He was bitterly dissapointed when he discovered that he would not be allowed to fly because he was a doctor and they were in such short supply. He was stationed in Newfoundland for most of the war, flying medical missions to rescue sailors from the huge merchant convoy fleets that were sent regularly from Halifax to England bringing war supplies to the beleaguered British (often carrying material from the US as well - even before it got into the war). The Germans torpedoed many of these ships and the losses were huge. His memories of the war were dominated by freezing and spend countless boring hours by himslef in the back of unheated aircraft flying back and forth for hours over the North Atlantic and never being allowed to touch the controls of a plane. He hated the cold and determined that, after the war, he would move to the tropics. To this end he took a degree in tropical medicine and was also given a scholarship to do a degree in internal medicine as well, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Society of Physicians. And then he moved to Trinidad and set up in private practice.  He was the only doctor on the island who had a degree in tropical medicine, so he soon became an advisor to the Health Department, as well as to the large American navy base there and began to collaborate very closely with Dr. Wilbur Downs and others at the Trinidad Regional Virus Laboratory as well as doing some ground-breaking research of his own (he had a small laboratory of his own attached to his office where he performed various medical tests that were otherwise unavailable in Trinidad, as well as his own research). There was quite a crowd of scientists at both Dr. Beebe's establishment and the Virus Laboratory who not only supported each other on various projects - but also used to socialise together. On weekends I remember going out masny times on archaeological digs with a group of them at sites which were being destroyed by erosion (Carib beach middens) or by building developments, as well as looking for rare orchids, birdwatching, and visiting caves and mud volcanoes. Dr. Beebe and Dad became close friends and used to spend hours chatting together about everything under the sun. They were both atheists and loved sharing the odd joke about religion. So, it was only natural that he became Will Beebe's doctor. When Dr. Beebe became very sick with his swollen mouth (``my mango mouth``) and (I think - if I remember correctly) heart problems, our whole family often went up from Port of Spain to Simla for the weekend. We would usually stay at Asa Wright's home. Dad would attend to Will and we would all have a ``holiday`` together. It was as a result of these visits and my own interst that I began assisting Will Beebe and other scientists there, and later on, at the Virus Laboratory where I worked my school holidays for many years from age 9 onwards until I was 20. Sorry to be so long-winded - but I thought this all might be of some interest to you. Thanks again for your major improvements to the Beebe article - you are doing him proud! Cheers and best wishes,   `