Title Details

Charles W. Denko was born to immigrant parents. He entered first grade speaking only Russian. A teacher devised assignments that brought him to a level of excellent English in a single year. Polio at age one had left Charles with a severely crippled leg. A passing stranger noticed him struggling while at play. The man, a member of the Shriners Society, arranged for Charles to be sent to the group s hospital for a surgical procedure that enabled him to walk.Scholarships saw Charles through college and graduate school. He emerged as a biochemist during World War II, enlisted, and was sent to the European Occupation where, as an officer in displaced persons camps, he used his knowledge of Eastern European languages to find family members of Jewish orphans their parents victims of the Holocaust with whom to place the children. On his return, Charles used the GI Bill for medical school, earned an M.D., and thus had the base on which to study rheumatologic disorders. He created a body of work that would advance rheumatology in the latter half of the twentieth century.