From 4-F to U.S. Navy Surgeon General

<p> In 1959, Harold M. Koenig was discharged after his first year at the U.S. Naval Academy because of progressive hearing loss and went on to college, then medical school. In 1965, the draft board notified him that upon completion of his internship in 1967 he would be drafted despite his disability--as the conflict in Vietnam escalated, many doctors with previously disqualifying medical conditions were reclassified as eligible to serve. Rather than wait to be drafted, Koenig volunteered f