He graduated from Wabash College and Northwestern University Medical School. He joined the U.S. Navy in 1942. He completed his internship at Presbyterian Hospital in Chicago. His wartime service was as medical officer on a Navy attack transport, USS Clinton, that participated in the taking of Okinawa. During a 10-year break from the Navy from 1946 to 1956, he was a surgical resident at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, a surgical fellow at the Mason Clinic, a surgeon in private practice and a clinical associate in surgery at the University of Washington Medical School. In 1956, he joined the staff of the American Medical Association Council on Medical Education where he certified residency programs through the country. Later that same year, he returned to the Navy as a staff surgeon at the Naval Hospital, Portsmouth, VA. He had succeeding assignments as Chief of Surgery at several Navy hospitals and later as an Executive Officer at the Philadelphia Naval Hospital. He then served a year in Vietnam as Commanding Officer of the Naval Hospital in Danang. Later, he commanded the Bethesda Naval Hospital for three years before becoming the 31st Surgeon General of the Navy in 1973. Following his retirement from the Navy in 1976 with the rank of Vice Admiral, went on to serve in the Veterans Administration, Washington, DC as the Director of Office for Academic Affairs, where he oversaw all of the VA's graduate medical relations with medical schools throughout the country. In 1978 he was appointed as the Chief Medical Director of the Veterans Administration by President Jimmy Carter, a position he held for six years. After his second retirement, he accepted a position as Medical Director of the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA), leading the PVA's grants to medical institutions throughout the country in their research and support of paralyzed veterans. While at the PVA, he also established an independent budget review of the VA's budget, which later became critical to Congressional passage of the VA's annual appropriation. He received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Distinguished Service Medal and the Legion of Merit with Combat V for military service in Vietnam and the American Medical Association's prestigious Nathan Davis Award. He met Phyllis after an arranged a blind date just weeks before Pearl Harbor, and they were married in the spring of 1942. After multiple Navy moves and duty stations, they finally settled in their first ever real home in Potomac, MD. He moved to Savannah in 2010 to be closer to his son, Bruce, and where he finally had time to devote to a longtime favorite hobby – painting. As an accomplished self taught artist, he had dabbled in painting all his life. In his early years, he illustrated a medical textbook on block anesthesia that was being written by a physician friend while he was in private practice. That book, along with his illustrations, is now in its ninth edition. He was preceded in death by his wife of almost 64 years, Phyllis. Surviving are his sons, Bruce L Custis, CDR, MSC, USN (Ret.) and his wife, Carol of Savannah, GA, and Peter H Custis, CAPT, MC USN (Ret.) and his wife, Laura, who live in San Diego, CA, and their adult children, Nick and Nadine.