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Ainm Gaeilge
Dochtúir Murchadh Oilibhéar Pluincéid de Móinbhíol

Morgan was the 8th of 10 children of John Joseph & Elizabeth (née McGowan) Mansfield of Sandymount, Co. Dublin, Ireland. He was born at the family home on Tritonville Road.

Called Plunket as a child and young man in Ireland & Papa later in life, in between he was known always as Dr. Mansfield.

He was an avid student of history and the sciences of generics and space exploration. Widely read in the great writers of his first home, Ireland, he was also fluent in the Irish language. Many times throughout his life he gave his time and energy to see the long desired uniting of the Irish nation become a reality. He entertained at family celebrations on his harmonica and was an accomplished sailor throughout his life. Often described as a Renesience Man, his love for his wife Clare was equalled only by his cherished career in medicine.

Morgan Mansfield, M.D.
F.A.C.S., F.C.C.P., F.I.C.S.
Diplomate American Board Of Surgery
Diplomate American Board Of Abdominal Surgery (Founding Member)

☤ Fellowships:
Fellow International College of Surgeons
Fellow American College of Surgeons
Fellow American College of Chest Physicians
Fellow American College of Colo-Rectal Surgeons

☤ Licensed to Practice Medicine:
State of New York
State of Maryland
Ireland

☤ Certified American Board Of Surgery:
May 1954

☤ Member:
American Medical Association
New York State Medical Society
Queens County Medical Society
Suffolk County Medical Society

☤ Assistant Clinical Professor of Surgery
Department of Medicine
State University of New York, Stony Brook

☤ Assistant Clinical Professor of Anatomical Sciences
Department of Health Sciences
State University of New York, Stony Brook

Morgan Mansfield earned his M.D. from University College Dublin, graduating at the head of his class January 1946. He interned at St. Vincent's Hospital, Dublin from January to June 1946. He was Chief Resident, Pathology there from July 1946 to June 1947. During that year, he was seeing patients at his Tritonville Rd home. Some 60 years later he was still fondly remembered by a now elderly former neighbor. In an email after his passing, the neighbor's daughter wrote "mum remembers the family well. They were very refined and cultured. On a number of occasions she had to go see the young Doctor in his office at the house. The whole family was always impeccably dressed, the finest clothes and always so polite and nice". A former nursing student from his time at St. Vincent's Hospital, Dublin wrote "I have often thought of Dr. Mansfield through the years. He made quite an impact on me and all the nursing students. He was such a gifted physician".

In June 1947 he emigrated to the U.S.A. Years later he would recall standing on the deck of the S.S. America as the Statue of Liberty first came into view and the ship's band began playing the Woody Guthrie song 'This Land Is Your Land'. It was to be a special song to him the remainder of his life.
The week of his arrival he met with fellow native Irishman, New York City Mayor William O'Dwyer. Within days he began his position as Chief Resident at the NYC owned and operated Cumberland Hospital in Brooklyn. He finished his Cumberland residency in Pathology in June 1948. That July, he joined St Catherine's Hospital in Brooklyn as Chief Resident in General Surgery. During his years at St. Catherine's he was also involved with the teaching program in the St. Catherine's School of Nursing. It was here he met the great love of his life, Clare Wackerman, who was a nursing student. In July of 1952 he moved upstate to Oneonta New York where he began his 12 month residency in Thoracic Surgery at Homer Folks Tuberculosis Hospital. Morgan & Clare married October 1952.

In July 1953, as he neared the end of his final residency, Dr. Mansfield accepted the dual position of Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery at Atlantic Coastline Rail Road Hospital, located in the heart of the Jim Crow deep south; Waycross, Georgia. His charge in these positions was to re-organize Coastline and try to gain Accreditation for it within 2 years. Under his directorship, Accreditation was accomplished within 14 months. However a much different problem had arisen; Dr. Mansfield had begun admitting and treating blacks in the emergency room. This was an unheard of, unfathomable, unimaginable breach of the south's deeply segregated and racist culture, (Morgan began doing this a full 1 1/2 years before Martin Luther King's name was first heard when he lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott). There were nurses in the ER who were objecting to this, refusing to treat the blacks, so he sent word that those who didn't like it could leave. At the start, the ACRR executive who was the Hospital Administrator was quite enamored of Dr. Mansfield and they became fast friends. Tension soon escalated. In time, the Administrator sat down with him and told him "Morgan, this has to stop. I like you personally, that's why I'm talking to you. I'm not saying what your doing is wrong but I can't have it. You don't understand the trouble you're causing for me, the position you're putting me in". As was his way, Morgan declined to compromise his integrity by conforming to a system he viewed as ignorant and immoral. During this period, Morgan & Clare had become close with another couple who were neighbors, socializing regularly. As the end of his time at Coastline was approaching, this neighbor met with him and told him he worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was deeply involved in local Klan business. He said the Waycross chapter of the Klan had been making plans for sometime to firebomb the Mansfield's home. He informed him that the hospital's Administrator was also the local area's Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, that he had personally delayed any actions being taken against him because of his fondness for Dr. Mansfield & admiration for his skill as a surgeon and felt he could persuade him to change his ways, but things had moved past that point and it wasn't good. The FBI agent, his friend, went on to tell Morgan that had he not expressed a desire to leave and return to New York, their house was about to be torched, with his young family in it.

In 1955, Dr. Mansfield was the youngest man to, at that time, be accepted as Fellow American College of Surgeons. A testament to his unique gift.

Making plans to begin a career in private practice, he returned to New York, leased an office in Queens and invested his entire life savings in outfitting it with all the necessary medical furnishings and equipment. Before the ink was dry on the lease he he received a letter that began "Greetings from the President ...", giving him a date and location for induction into the US Armed Forces. At age 34 he'd been drafted. In May 1955 he was Commissioned as Captain, United States Air Force and stationed at 3810 USAF Hospital, Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama and installed as Chief of Thoracic Surgery. Shortly thereafter, due to his expertise and growing reputation, he was elevated to Chief of Surgery at 3810, where he remained. When his enlistment ended in May 1957 he returned home to New York and restarted his career as a Surgeon in private practice.

Beginning in the summer of 1957 and lasting through the mid 1960's, Dr. Mansfield was in solo practice as a specialist in Thoracic and General Surgery in Queens, New York. In 1957 he began a number of years as Chief of Surgery at Queens Memorial Hospital. During his years in solo practice he was affiliated with and was the surgical specialist at a number of Queens area hospitals, including; St Catherine's, (where be resumed his teaching affiliation with the School of Nursing), St. Anthony's Hospital Woodhaven, Queens General Hospital, Triboro Hospital, Hillcrest General Hospital, Deepdale General Hospital, Terrace Heights Hospital and Interfaith Hospital. While President of the Medical Board as well as Chief of Surgery at Interfaith Hospital of Queens he began preparations to enter group practice for the first time.

Along with a select group of specialists, Morgan was a founding member of the East Nassau Medical Group, beginning his nearly 2 decade career as it's Chairman, Department of Surgery. The Group during these years controlled Syosset Hospital in Syosset New York. This is where Dr. Mansfield spent nearly 20 years as Chief of Surgery and became widely renowned and respected as one of the most skilled surgeons and expert diagnosticians in the New York and Long Island area. During these years he was an innovator of a number of now widely accepted techniques in abdominal surgery and was one of the earliest advocates and first specialists in the use of lasers in Laproscopic Surgery.

During his years in group practice, Dr. Mansfield began passing on his expertise to the next generation of surgeons and M.D.'s, teaching surgical techniques to the interns and Anatomy to the medical students at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, having become Assistant Clinical Professor of Surgery for SUNY SB Department of Medicine and Assistant Clinical Professor of Anatomical Sciences for it's Department of Heath Sciences in 1971.

In 1972 he began his long, unpaid service to fellow Veterans as Visiting Surgical Specialist for Thoracic and General Surgery at the Veterans Administration Hospital, Northport, New York. It was while serving in this capacity he became one of the early members of the medical profession to recognize and investigate the symptoms he was seeing in returning Vietnam Veterans and the link to the use of the defoliant Agent Orange in the war. ( As in Waycross, he was far ahead of conventional wisdom as even the American Medical Association denied the link until 1984 and the Veterans Administration itself did not acknowledge or pay it's first claims for Agent Orange Syndrome until 1991 ).

Retiring from group practice in 1985, he began what was the most enjoyable and personally satisfying era of his surgical career. At the age of 65 he once again entered private practice, opening his office in Smithtown New York with his wife Clare, a Registered Nurse, as his assistant. He performed all his surgery at Community Hospital of Smithtown, a short 2 minute walk next door to his office. He continued as an active surgeon with this arrangement until his partial retirement when he was in his late 70's. From that point until his passing at age 87 he remained active 5 days a week as a consultant for numerous medical organizations.

In addition to all the patients who entered his office, he never failed to answer a knock on the door from an ill neighbor needing help or the endless stream of relatives, even relatives of relatives who needed care.

It will never know the number of lives he impacted during his 60 year career; not how many thousands went under his knife, nor the countless more he treated without surgery. What was glimpsed at through the years and after his passing, in letters & messages, from patients expressing unending gratitude for Dr. Mansfield helping them when no other Physician seemed able was also how much it meant to them the care, encouragement and kindness he showed for them as individuals.

He loved Medicine and used his talent as a Doctor to fulfill his simple and profound desire to help others.
The prayer on Morgan's mass card:

Dear God, please care for him in Heaven as he tried to care for Your own here on earth

He left behind Clare, their 5 children and 6 grandchildren.

✞ Dr. Morgan Oliver Plunket Mansfield is buried in the large Wackerman Family Grave Site at St. John's Catholic Cemetery in Queens, New York. Fittingly, many of those with whom he is buried were, in life, his patients. There is no tombstone over the grave site, which contains 31 family members dating back to 1890.