Obituary: Albert Allen Wilson M.D.

Albert Wilson

Albert Allen Wilson M.D. died September 2, 2011. Dr. Wilson was born in Lambert, Miss. and raised on a small farm in Mimitala, Miss. A gifted student, he graduated from the University of Mississippi and the University of Tennessee Medical School. Albert served as a paratrooper flight surgeon in the U.S. Army Air Corp.

After his military service, he was trained in orthopedics at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami and was certified by the American Board of Orthopedic Surgery. He had a distinguished career as an orthopedic surgeon in Tampa, eventually joining the Orthopedic Institute of the University of South Florida. He had a long association with the Florida Crippled Children’s Bureau. The treatment of handicapped children was of particular interest to Dr. Wilson throughout his years of practice.

Albert was a talented writer having edited the Ole Miss campus newspaper as an undergraduate. Honors bestowed upon him included appointments to Omicron Delta Kappa and the Ole Miss Hall of Fame. He founded and edited the “Journal of the Orthopedic Society of Florida.” He also served as that organization’s president.

Dr. Wilson retired to a beachside home in Boca Grande where he enjoyed fishing and friends. An avid boater, he was a member of the Boca Grande Pass Yacht Club.

Throughout his life, he read widely and well. During his long struggle with cancer, Albert found particular solace in the words of “You Can’t Go Home Again” where a favorite author of his, Thomas Wolfe, wrote: “To lose the earth you know, for greater knowing: to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.” In his later years, Albert continued to cultivate his love of words and writing. He became a short story author, drawing on the experiences of his youth in rural Mississippi.

Dr. Wilson is survived by his wife of 64 years, Camylle Deeter Wilson: his daughter Zibelle Hengstler and her husband, Dr. Dennis Hengstler; his son Jim and his wife, Lynne Jenkins Wilson; his brothers George and Dr. C.L. Wilson; and his beloved grandchildren, Olivia and Clark Wilson.

As a colleague and friend once said of him, Albert Wilson was the epitome of what a physician should be.