“What shall we say of the some twenty-five workers, who fully appreciating the dangers incident to the daily routine, still continue at a rate of compensation not higher than the gain in other kinds of work in which these dangers are lacking. We may say, at least, that idealism and the spirit of sacrifice for the general good have not died out.”
(Quote: “The Cooperation with the United States Public Health Service,” Robert A. Cooley, Eighth Biennial Report, Montana State Board of Entomology, 1929–1930, page 10.)
The 25 workers who Cooley wrote about included people working for both the State of Montana and the U.S. Public Health Service. Three of these researchers died during the years that the Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF) work was being done at the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse laboratory. Cooley had taught two of them—William Gittinger and Arthur Kerlee—at Montana State College. On June 6, 1929, Cooley dedicated the Gittinger-Kerlee memorial plaque at Montana State College to his former students.
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William Edwin Gittinger (1899-June 30, 1922)
William Gittinger graduated from high school around 1918. He then attended the Montana State College, graduating from Dr. Robert Cooley’s entomology program. He hoped to go to medical school but took a job as a junior laboratory assistant in the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse laboratory. He had only worked there a short while when he was infected by Rocky Mountain spotted fever and died on June 30, 1922. He was almost 23 years old and left his mother, two sisters, and a brother. According to Lucy Salamanca, after Gittinger died, Dr. Roscoe Spencer posted a sign on the laboratory door: ‘‘Persons entering these premises do so at their own risk!”
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Image: Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum, 3521
