{"id":19674,"date":"2018-09-27T10:53:20","date_gmt":"2018-09-27T14:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/?p=19674"},"modified":"2018-09-27T10:53:20","modified_gmt":"2018-09-27T14:53:20","slug":"fletcher-derrick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/fletcher-derrick\/","title":{"rendered":"Tinker Tailor Surgeon Spy: Fletcher Derrick '55"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Alumni<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

No one would suspect a urological surgeon to be a covert courier \u2014 even his wife.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cAS THE CIA SAYS, <\/span>I was hiding in plain sight.\u201d<\/p>\n

After graduating from Clemson in 1955, Fletcher Derrick joined the Army as a young medical student at the Medical University of South Carolina and was sent to Fort Benning in Georgia for an internship. Following medical school, he traveled with the Army to Germany and continued his urology training there at a hospital in Landstuhl. When Derrick and his wife, Martha, returned to the U.S. with a new baby, Derrick began his four-year residency at MUSC, where he helped start the kidney transplant program.<\/p>\n

Next came teaching and chairing the urology department at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., until Derrick finally settled back in Charleston, where he started his private practice. \u201cSettled\u201d is perhaps the wrong word because the Derricks traveled constantly for medical conferences and committee trips to places like Cambodia, Egypt, Scandinavia, Japan, Peru and Nepal, to name a few.<\/p>\n

But Derrick\u2019s work as a covert courier for U.S. Military Intelligence began long before this, when he was a medical intern at Fort Benning \u2014 at the height of the Cold War.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe commanding officer called me in on what I thought was a routine check,\u201d Derrick says. But after a few moments of small talk, the officer approached him with the courier position, which involved transporting and delivering sensitive documents around the globe during Derrick\u2019s many travels. When asked if he would be in any danger, the officer replied, \u201cHighly unlikely.\u201d The next question was, \u201cCan I think about it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have 24 hours. And you can\u2019t tell a soul. Not even your wife.\u201d<\/p>\n

Derrick accepted. And it wasn\u2019t until he wrote his book Surgeon Spy <\/i><\/span>in 2016 that Martha Derrick was surprised to discover her husband\u2019s secret life.<\/p>\n

After serving as a courier for over 20 years, Derrick remembers the last package he ever delivered: \u201cHow they knew we were planning a trip to Italy, I\u2019ll never know, but they called and said, \u2018Package on the way.\u2019 So, we traveled to Anzio and were visiting one of the art exhibits there. I was just looking at a mural on the wall when this major walks in. Seeing his nametag, I knew I had to deliver the package to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018I\u2019ve been waiting on you!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No one would suspect a urological surgeon to be a covert courier \u2014 even his wife. \u201cAS THE CIA SAYS, I was hiding in plain sight.\u201d After graduating from Clemson in 1955, Fletcher Derrick joined the Army as a young medical student at the Medical University of South Carolina and was sent to Fort Benning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":19675,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[762,838,1156,2703,2886,3163],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-19674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumniprofiles","tag-cold-war","tag-covert-courier","tag-fall-2018-alumni-profiles","tag-spy","tag-surgeon","tag-urology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2018\/09\/i-SH79Knj-X3.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19674"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=19674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}