Each February, when it seems that winter will never end, the 150 members of the Puerto Rico Chapter of the American College of Surgeons host a week-long postgraduate program in San Juan. Twenty university-affiliated surgeons from the mainland attended in 1981, with four surgeons from Puerto Rico who presented papers. In addition to the members of the Puerto Rico Chapter, 178 persons signed up for the meeting and most of them attended every session, despite the obvious competition from the beautiful sunshine and pounding surf only a few hundred feet away from the meeting hall in the Caribe Hilton.
A feature of this year's program was the lectureship honoring Frank Raffucci, MD, a greatly loved and respected former professor and chairman of the department of surgery at the University of Puerto Rico. Dr Raffucci's mentor and father figure was Owen Wangensteen, MD, who was scheduled to give the first Frank