Rear Admiral Thomas Burkhard '65 Named 2004 Distinguished Alumnus

Admiral Burkhard is currently Commander of Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, Virginia, the Navy’s largest medical center. A native of Trumbull, CT, Tom played soccer, basketball and baseball at Hopkins and served as sports editor of the Panagraph. Retired Hopkins history teacher Karl Crawford recalls Tom as a quiet leader even then. "He simply had commander quality about him," says Karl. Tom credits Hopkins as the place that made it possible for him to attend Harvard College and to earn the ROTC scholarship that sent him on his Naval career. "It certainly gave me the educational basis for everything I’ve done," he says. After graduating cum laude from Harvard in 1969, Tom was commissioned an Ensign in the Line Navy and was assigned to a coastal minesweeper, USS Whippoorwill MSC-207, home ported in Sasebo, Japan. He performed coastal patrols in South Vietnam aboard the Whippoorwill. At the end of hostilities, Tom was part of Operation Endsweep, which cleared mines from North Vietnamese waters, enabling U.S. prisoners of war to return home. In fact, he visited downtown Haiphong one week after the peace treaty was signed while attending negotiations about the minesweeping.

Tom went on to attend medical school at the University of Connecticut, from which he graduated in 1977. He then completed an internship and a diagnostic radiology residency at Naval Regional Medical Center in San Diego, where he was awarded the Outstanding Senior Resident Award. He selected his medical specialty, he says, because it requires a broad knowledge of medicine, from orthopedics to obstetrics to critical care, and allows one to participate in patient care throughout the medical center. Tom chose to make the military his career because he was able to combine "two of the most honorable professions"—the military and medicine. "Wearing the cloth of the nation as part of its defense and practicing the healing arts is a combination that can’t be beaten," he says. In addition, military medicine "allows one never to have to ask somebody how sick they can afford to be" since all the medical expenses for military patients are paid for by the government. Finally, military medicine allows him to practice all over the world, experiencing different cultures and "diseases that the average physician never dreamed of."

Since 1981 Tom has served in numerous positions for the Navy, most recently as Deputy Commander at Naval Medical Center in San Diego and National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland; Commander of Naval Hospital at Camp Pendleton; and Fleet Medical Officer for Commander in Chief, U.S. Naval Forces Europe in London. At Portsmouth he is responsible for a 286-bed acute care tertiary medical center with 5,500 employees. In addition, Tom has received numerous military awards and is the coauthor of 15 radiology peer reviewed articles. He and his wife, Susan, a native of Litchfield, have two grown daughters.