Sgt. Sheldon Dyer
U.S. Army – 168th Combat Engineer Battalion
5th U.S. Army Hospital and Nelligen Dispensary
Medic/Radiographic Technologist
Nellingen, Germany
1960-1963
U.S. Army – 168th Combat Engineer Battalion
5th U.S. Army Hospital and Nelligen Dispensary
Medic/Radiographic Technologist
Nellingen, Germany
1960-1963
“I’ve had an interesting life. You think back and think gee, you really haven’t done anything and I’ve done a lot”.
Sheldon Dyer was born in Willington, CT in 1941. His dad worked at the local Pratt & Whitney plant in Willimantic as a parts inspector and his mother was primarily a homemaker with part time jobs here and there. Sheldon also had a sister 10 years his junior.
Sheldon traces his ancestry back to Thomas Dyer who sailed from England in 1622 and landed in Boston, Massachusetts. Dyer went to the docks in England to say farewell to his girlfriend who was leaving for America with her family. The girls father suggested Thomas come with them, and he jumped at the opportunity. He didn’t even tell his parents he was leaving. Thomas was a tavernkeeper, had a family of nine children and lived in Weymouth Massachusetts directly across from the Old North Church made famous by Paul Revere’s ride.
Three generations later Eliphalet Dyer from Windham, CT was a lawyer educated at both Yale and Harvard. Eliphalet, which means God is my deliverance in Hebrew, fought in the French and Indian Wars and was a member of both the First and Second Continental Congress. Each year the colonists elected members to the Continental Congress. After serving in 1774 and 1775 Eliphalet became embroiled in the ‘Rhubarb Affair’ and a scandal involving the acquisition of land in the Susquehanna Valley. At that time Connecticut was looking acquire land to expand its boundaries. He was not re-elected in 1776 and did not get to sign the Declaration of Independence. He was re-elected in 1777 and each year thereafter until 1783. He also supported moving More’s Indian Charity School to New Hampshire, which later became Dartmouth College. Sheldon is the 9th generation of Dyers in the U.S.
Sheldon had a typical New England childhood. He spent his time fishing and riding his bike with his friends. He also enjoyed playing on the town baseball, basketball and soccer teams. Sheldon was very ambitious and had a variety of jobs including picking small cucumber used to make pickles, mowing lawns, cutting brush, pulling weeds and cleaning M1 rifles and BAR’s for the University of Connecticut ROTC. In the winter he made Christmas wreaths and candle holders from white birch logs.
Sheldon attended high school in the neighboring town of Windham 12 miles away where he was on the track and cross-country teams. In his senior year Sheldon was the MVP for the cross-country team. In track he competed in the broad jump, the 440 sprint, the mile and on occasion the half mile. There were no late buses after practice and Sheldon did not have a car. He was on his own to get home. Every night Sheldon would walk a mile from Windham High School to RT 195 and then hitchhike home. “Most of the time I had to walk the last mile home to my house”.
Sheldon graduated in June of 1959 along with 250 other classmates. He was an average student and like many kids his age he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life. There was a Selective Service draft in effect at the time and Sheldon decided to enlist in the Army rather than be drafted. After signing on the dotted line, the recruiter had Sheldon and the other recruits take the ASVAB test (Armed Services Aptitude Battery). The ASVAB was and still is used by the U.S. military to determine where a recruit’s skills and knowledge were the strongest and help direct them toward a career path where they would be most successful. Sheldon scored well and headed off to become a medic.
Boot Camp and Advanced Individual Training (AIT) were held at Fort Sam Houston in Texas. After two months of training, it came time for Sheldon to select his first duty station. “I never really did much traveling when I was young. We weren’t rich”. He thought, “I guess I could stay in the United States. There’s plenty of places to see here”. Uncle Sam thought otherwise and he was assigned to the 168th Combat Engineer Battalion in Nelligen, Germany. “I’m certainly glad they did”.
The battalion was primarily responsible for building pontoon bridges across the Rhine River. Sheldon and the first sergeant would ride in a boat out to the construction sites where the men were working. Sheldon’s job was to treat any injuries the engineers received while working on the project. “I was lucky and took photographs and movies of the entire process” of building the bridges.
When the medical team was on the base Sheldon would hold sick call each morning. “If we didn’t have any classes the medical team would sit around and play cards, drink coffee and smoke.” None of that was appealing to Sheldon and he found the job to be very boring. One day “they asked for a volunteer and of course the old timers said, don’t ever volunteer for anything. I volunteered. The best thing I ever did”!
The base had a medical dispensary that was in need of an additional employee. Sheldon was hired and found himself with a regular 8-5 job when he wasn’t out at a site with the engineers and that was very infrequent. Sheldon found himself learning how to give injections and suture wounds. The dispensary also had x-ray equipment that was run by both civilians and military personnel. The Sergeant in charge of the unit took Sheldon under his wing and trained him to take x-rays. Not too long into this job the sergeant was diagnosed with diabetes and was discharged from the Army. The staff recognized Sheldon had an aptitude for x-rays and sent him to the 5th General Hospital in Stuttgart for three months of training in radiology. The radiologists and doctors gave Sheldon a real education in radiology and Sheldon absorbed it all. After his time in Stuttgart he was selected for the Medical Leaders Course (MLC).
When he completed the MLC Sheldon was selected to run the x-ray department at the Nellingen Dispensary near Stuttgart, Germany. Wherever Sheldon went the radiologists were impressed with the quality of his x-ray films. He advanced in rank to Corporal and then received a waiver to be promoted to Sergeant early. After his promotion Sheldon was recommended for the month-long NCO Academy in Bad Tolz, Germany where he learned how to lead and manage soldiers.
Sheldon enjoyed his time in the Army, but he decided not to stay beyond his original enlistment. “The main reason was there was a lot of crazy people”. Sheldon was living in a barracks with a lot of other soldiers and some of them did not want to be in the military. They would often misbehave in a variety of ways in hope of being discharged. Sheldon couldn’t tolerate this craziness, and he returned civilian life at the end of his tour.
Sheldon settled back into Willington where he live with his parents while he contemplated his next step down life’s path. He took a summer job with the Forestry Department working in a Fire Tower. “You’re way up high…so you’d look all over the place and if you saw smoke…you’d notify another tower”. The two towers would triangulate the location of the fire and call it into a Ranger.
That summer Sheldon made enough money to buy his first car, a used Corvair. When the summer came to an end, so did his job and Sheldon had to find permanent employment. He was reading the newspaper one morning and saw an advertisement for the opening of a new school for x-ray technologists at the local hospital, Windham Hospital. Sheldon decided to drive to the hospital to see what more he could learn more about the school. There he met with Mr. Baracco, an Army veteran. There were four months until classes began and there was a shortage of qualified x-ray technicians in Connecticut. Mr. Baracco was impressed with Sheldon’s radiology experience from his time in the Army, and he agreed to hire Sheldon as an x-ray technologist at the hospital. As an added benefit, he told Sheldon he could keep the job during the school year. Sheldon spent half a day in class and half a day taking x-rays. The school was 24 months with no time off and at the conclusion of the class Sheldon passed the national registry for radiologic technologists.
Radiology school helped Sheldon find his passion which led to a long and successful career in radiology. While attending school he found his other passion, Caroline Heyke who was also enrolled in the program. Sheldon was smitten with her, a romance grew between them, and the couple was married in 1966.
When Sheldon graduated from school the Radiology Department was growing. Mr. Baracco needed help running the department and the school and he promoted Sheldon to Assistant Chief Technologist. A few years later Mr. Baracco left to start another school in New Britain, Connecticut and Lee Lustig was hired to manage the school and the radiology department. When Lee Lustig left a few years later to work with the 3M Company, Sheldon was promoted to Technical Director.
The department continued to expand with the rapid developments in computerization, CT scanning, nuclear medicine, mammography’s and ultrasound. The hospital also established a mammography center and brought in MRI capabilities. Sheldon was involved in building a site to house a truck that contained a portable MRI machine. With the rapid growth and change Sheldon needed to delegate some of his responsibilities. He hired former students Mark Patros and Beth Kinkade to be Director of the X-Ray Program and Assistant Technical Director, respectively.
Sheldon recalled having a very vibrant and challenging career. He worked with the 3M Company on their experimental Highlight System. This system eliminated the darkroom and put the x-ray developing equipment in the same room as the x-ray machine. “We didn’t have to leave the patient alone. It saved time and money. We were the first hospital in the nation to have diagnostic rooms with such capabilities”. Sheldon was also involved with experiments with rare earth technology to cut radiation exposure in half. “We had people from the U.S., Canada, South America and Europe come to our department to see our capabilities”.
After 30+ years on the job, Sheldon was faced with a change in the Hospital Administrator. The incoming Administrator and Sheldon didn’t see eye-to-eye which led to tension and eventually the daily conflict became too much for Sheldon. He decided to step down and elected to go back to working in the Radiology Department. Mentally, this took a toll on Sheldon. After so many years in a job that he truly loved, his self-worth was tied to his work. Stepping down felt like failing. After eight months Sheldon took a month off to clear his mind. When he returned to the hospital he decided he would take a position working on the department floor taking x-rays and helping the radiology students. This was what he loved most during his career, and he was very good at it.
From a diagnostic standpoint Sheldon would often read the x-rays and find small breaks that doctors and other radiologists missed. Sheldon recalled a particular occasion; after diplomatically pointing out to a doctor, he had perhaps missed a fracture, the doctor told Sheldon he should speak freely in the future when he brought films for the doctor to read. Sheldon and his wife took a vacation to Mallorca and were exploring caves when his wife fell and seriously injured her ankle. At a local clinic a doctor took two x-rays and diagnosed no fracture. Sheldon knew his wife couldn’t place any pressure on her ankle, so he looked at the films. “I’m looking and I see a small separation, about a millimeter”. He told the doctor he was an x-ray technologist; he showed the doctor where he could see the separation and suggested she take one more film from a different angle. She had another image taken and “lo and behold there was a spiral fracture”.
Sheldon used his down time at the hospital to think of different approaches to positioning a patient to get better images. Sheldon was particularly good at taking x-rays of the temporal bone of the inner ear. Through the years Sheldon won various awards from professional organizations for his “experiments” to get better images. He also served as president of the Connecticut Society of Radiologic Technologists. Sheldon also continued to teach which was something he really enjoyed. When recent graduates were hired in the Radiology Department, Sheldon taught them the tricks of the trade.
Outside of work, Sheldon and Caroline had two daughters and two sons. Sheldon coached the local town baseball, soccer and basketball teams when his children were active in sports. He was the Chairman of the Nathan Hale Ancient Fife and Drum Corps. for a number of years and the entire family participated in the organization. “We were out almost every weekend” marching in parades and putting on a show about “a day in the life of a Continental soldier”. Sheldon’s eldest daughter played the fife and his oldest son played the snare drum. His wife and other daughter were involved in preparing meals for all the participants. Sheldon was a Knowlton Ranger and belonged to the Brigade of the American Revolution.
Sheldon also volunteered his time with the town of Mansfield Recreation Committee for 40 years and served as chairman of that committee for 35 years. He played competitive badminton throughout the state of Connecticut with Dr. Earl Herbert winning many tournaments. For 58 years Sheldon has studied the Bible daily, especially Prophecy.
Sheldon considers himself to have been lucky in life, but it wasn’t always a smooth path. In 2006 Sheldon was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in his neck. Fortunately, he was diagnosed early thanks to his alert dentist, and he received chemotherapy treatments and stem cell transplant treatments. “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy”. Sheldon has been in remission for 20 years and said his Bible study helped him beat the cancer.
Today Sheldon and Caroline keep busy with their children and eight grandchildren. Sheldon is active in the local American Legion and tracing the genealogy of his family. Sheldon, you are one of the unsung members of the military. Quietly doing the job that Uncle Sam asked you to do and doing it to the best of your ability. You used the skills the military taught you to have a full and rewarding career and help other people know if their foot bone is still connected to their ankle bone.
Sheldon Dyer was born in Willington, CT in 1941. His dad worked at the local Pratt & Whitney plant in Willimantic as a parts inspector and his mother was primarily a homemaker with part time jobs here and there. Sheldon also had a sister 10 years his junior.
Sheldon traces his ancestry back to Thomas Dyer who sailed from England in 1622 and landed in Boston, Massachusetts. Dyer went to the docks in England to say farewell to his girlfriend who was leaving for America with her family. The girls father suggested Thomas come with them, and he jumped at the opportunity. He didn’t even tell his parents he was leaving. Thomas was a tavernkeeper, had a family of nine children and lived in Weymouth Massachusetts directly across from the Old North Church made famous by Paul Revere’s ride.
Three generations later Eliphalet Dyer from Windham, CT was a lawyer educated at both Yale and Harvard. Eliphalet, which means God is my deliverance in Hebrew, fought in the French and Indian Wars and was a member of both the First and Second Continental Congress. Each year the colonists elected members to the Continental Congress. After serving in 1774 and 1775 Eliphalet became embroiled in the ‘Rhubarb Affair’ and a scandal involving the acquisition of land in the Susquehanna Valley. At that time Connecticut was looking acquire land to expand its boundaries. He was not re-elected in 1776 and did not get to sign the Declaration of Independence. He was re-elected in 1777 and each year thereafter until 1783. He also supported moving More’s Indian Charity School to New Hampshire, which later became Dartmouth College. Sheldon is the 9th generation of Dyers in the U.S.
Sheldon had a typical New England childhood. He spent his time fishing and riding his bike with his friends. He also enjoyed playing on the town baseball, basketball and soccer teams. Sheldon was very ambitious and had a variety of jobs including picking small cucumber used to make pickles, mowing lawns, cutting brush, pulling weeds and cleaning M1 rifles and BAR’s for the University of Connecticut ROTC. In the winter he made Christmas wreaths and candle holders from white birch logs.
Sheldon attended high school in the neighboring town of Windham 12 miles away where he was on the track and cross-country teams. In his senior year Sheldon was the MVP for the cross-country team. In track he competed in the broad jump, the 440 sprint, the mile and on occasion the half mile. There were no late buses after practice and Sheldon did not have a car. He was on his own to get home. Every night Sheldon would walk a mile from Windham High School to RT 195 and then hitchhike home. “Most of the time I had to walk the last mile home to my house”.
Sheldon graduated in June of 1959 along with 250 other classmates. He was an average student and like many kids his age he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life. There was a Selective Service draft in effect at the time and Sheldon decided to enlist in the Army rather than be drafted. After signing on the dotted line, the recruiter had Sheldon and the other recruits take the ASVAB test (Armed Services Aptitude Battery). The ASVAB was and still is used by the U.S. military to determine where a recruit’s skills and knowledge were the strongest and help direct them toward a career path where they would be most successful. Sheldon scored well and headed off to become a medic.
Boot Camp and Advanced Individual Training (AIT) were held at Fort Sam Houston in Texas. After two months of training, it came time for Sheldon to select his first duty station. “I never really did much traveling when I was young. We weren’t rich”. He thought, “I guess I could stay in the United States. There’s plenty of places to see here”. Uncle Sam thought otherwise and he was assigned to the 168th Combat Engineer Battalion in Nelligen, Germany. “I’m certainly glad they did”.
The battalion was primarily responsible for building pontoon bridges across the Rhine River. Sheldon and the first sergeant would ride in a boat out to the construction sites where the men were working. Sheldon’s job was to treat any injuries the engineers received while working on the project. “I was lucky and took photographs and movies of the entire process” of building the bridges.
When the medical team was on the base Sheldon would hold sick call each morning. “If we didn’t have any classes the medical team would sit around and play cards, drink coffee and smoke.” None of that was appealing to Sheldon and he found the job to be very boring. One day “they asked for a volunteer and of course the old timers said, don’t ever volunteer for anything. I volunteered. The best thing I ever did”!
The base had a medical dispensary that was in need of an additional employee. Sheldon was hired and found himself with a regular 8-5 job when he wasn’t out at a site with the engineers and that was very infrequent. Sheldon found himself learning how to give injections and suture wounds. The dispensary also had x-ray equipment that was run by both civilians and military personnel. The Sergeant in charge of the unit took Sheldon under his wing and trained him to take x-rays. Not too long into this job the sergeant was diagnosed with diabetes and was discharged from the Army. The staff recognized Sheldon had an aptitude for x-rays and sent him to the 5th General Hospital in Stuttgart for three months of training in radiology. The radiologists and doctors gave Sheldon a real education in radiology and Sheldon absorbed it all. After his time in Stuttgart he was selected for the Medical Leaders Course (MLC).
When he completed the MLC Sheldon was selected to run the x-ray department at the Nellingen Dispensary near Stuttgart, Germany. Wherever Sheldon went the radiologists were impressed with the quality of his x-ray films. He advanced in rank to Corporal and then received a waiver to be promoted to Sergeant early. After his promotion Sheldon was recommended for the month-long NCO Academy in Bad Tolz, Germany where he learned how to lead and manage soldiers.
Sheldon enjoyed his time in the Army, but he decided not to stay beyond his original enlistment. “The main reason was there was a lot of crazy people”. Sheldon was living in a barracks with a lot of other soldiers and some of them did not want to be in the military. They would often misbehave in a variety of ways in hope of being discharged. Sheldon couldn’t tolerate this craziness, and he returned civilian life at the end of his tour.
Sheldon settled back into Willington where he live with his parents while he contemplated his next step down life’s path. He took a summer job with the Forestry Department working in a Fire Tower. “You’re way up high…so you’d look all over the place and if you saw smoke…you’d notify another tower”. The two towers would triangulate the location of the fire and call it into a Ranger.
That summer Sheldon made enough money to buy his first car, a used Corvair. When the summer came to an end, so did his job and Sheldon had to find permanent employment. He was reading the newspaper one morning and saw an advertisement for the opening of a new school for x-ray technologists at the local hospital, Windham Hospital. Sheldon decided to drive to the hospital to see what more he could learn more about the school. There he met with Mr. Baracco, an Army veteran. There were four months until classes began and there was a shortage of qualified x-ray technicians in Connecticut. Mr. Baracco was impressed with Sheldon’s radiology experience from his time in the Army, and he agreed to hire Sheldon as an x-ray technologist at the hospital. As an added benefit, he told Sheldon he could keep the job during the school year. Sheldon spent half a day in class and half a day taking x-rays. The school was 24 months with no time off and at the conclusion of the class Sheldon passed the national registry for radiologic technologists.
Radiology school helped Sheldon find his passion which led to a long and successful career in radiology. While attending school he found his other passion, Caroline Heyke who was also enrolled in the program. Sheldon was smitten with her, a romance grew between them, and the couple was married in 1966.
When Sheldon graduated from school the Radiology Department was growing. Mr. Baracco needed help running the department and the school and he promoted Sheldon to Assistant Chief Technologist. A few years later Mr. Baracco left to start another school in New Britain, Connecticut and Lee Lustig was hired to manage the school and the radiology department. When Lee Lustig left a few years later to work with the 3M Company, Sheldon was promoted to Technical Director.
The department continued to expand with the rapid developments in computerization, CT scanning, nuclear medicine, mammography’s and ultrasound. The hospital also established a mammography center and brought in MRI capabilities. Sheldon was involved in building a site to house a truck that contained a portable MRI machine. With the rapid growth and change Sheldon needed to delegate some of his responsibilities. He hired former students Mark Patros and Beth Kinkade to be Director of the X-Ray Program and Assistant Technical Director, respectively.
Sheldon recalled having a very vibrant and challenging career. He worked with the 3M Company on their experimental Highlight System. This system eliminated the darkroom and put the x-ray developing equipment in the same room as the x-ray machine. “We didn’t have to leave the patient alone. It saved time and money. We were the first hospital in the nation to have diagnostic rooms with such capabilities”. Sheldon was also involved with experiments with rare earth technology to cut radiation exposure in half. “We had people from the U.S., Canada, South America and Europe come to our department to see our capabilities”.
After 30+ years on the job, Sheldon was faced with a change in the Hospital Administrator. The incoming Administrator and Sheldon didn’t see eye-to-eye which led to tension and eventually the daily conflict became too much for Sheldon. He decided to step down and elected to go back to working in the Radiology Department. Mentally, this took a toll on Sheldon. After so many years in a job that he truly loved, his self-worth was tied to his work. Stepping down felt like failing. After eight months Sheldon took a month off to clear his mind. When he returned to the hospital he decided he would take a position working on the department floor taking x-rays and helping the radiology students. This was what he loved most during his career, and he was very good at it.
From a diagnostic standpoint Sheldon would often read the x-rays and find small breaks that doctors and other radiologists missed. Sheldon recalled a particular occasion; after diplomatically pointing out to a doctor, he had perhaps missed a fracture, the doctor told Sheldon he should speak freely in the future when he brought films for the doctor to read. Sheldon and his wife took a vacation to Mallorca and were exploring caves when his wife fell and seriously injured her ankle. At a local clinic a doctor took two x-rays and diagnosed no fracture. Sheldon knew his wife couldn’t place any pressure on her ankle, so he looked at the films. “I’m looking and I see a small separation, about a millimeter”. He told the doctor he was an x-ray technologist; he showed the doctor where he could see the separation and suggested she take one more film from a different angle. She had another image taken and “lo and behold there was a spiral fracture”.
Sheldon used his down time at the hospital to think of different approaches to positioning a patient to get better images. Sheldon was particularly good at taking x-rays of the temporal bone of the inner ear. Through the years Sheldon won various awards from professional organizations for his “experiments” to get better images. He also served as president of the Connecticut Society of Radiologic Technologists. Sheldon also continued to teach which was something he really enjoyed. When recent graduates were hired in the Radiology Department, Sheldon taught them the tricks of the trade.
Outside of work, Sheldon and Caroline had two daughters and two sons. Sheldon coached the local town baseball, soccer and basketball teams when his children were active in sports. He was the Chairman of the Nathan Hale Ancient Fife and Drum Corps. for a number of years and the entire family participated in the organization. “We were out almost every weekend” marching in parades and putting on a show about “a day in the life of a Continental soldier”. Sheldon’s eldest daughter played the fife and his oldest son played the snare drum. His wife and other daughter were involved in preparing meals for all the participants. Sheldon was a Knowlton Ranger and belonged to the Brigade of the American Revolution.
Sheldon also volunteered his time with the town of Mansfield Recreation Committee for 40 years and served as chairman of that committee for 35 years. He played competitive badminton throughout the state of Connecticut with Dr. Earl Herbert winning many tournaments. For 58 years Sheldon has studied the Bible daily, especially Prophecy.
Sheldon considers himself to have been lucky in life, but it wasn’t always a smooth path. In 2006 Sheldon was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in his neck. Fortunately, he was diagnosed early thanks to his alert dentist, and he received chemotherapy treatments and stem cell transplant treatments. “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy”. Sheldon has been in remission for 20 years and said his Bible study helped him beat the cancer.
Today Sheldon and Caroline keep busy with their children and eight grandchildren. Sheldon is active in the local American Legion and tracing the genealogy of his family. Sheldon, you are one of the unsung members of the military. Quietly doing the job that Uncle Sam asked you to do and doing it to the best of your ability. You used the skills the military taught you to have a full and rewarding career and help other people know if their foot bone is still connected to their ankle bone.