In the early 1970s, Dr. Mangold and his business partner, Dr. Fischer, negotiated contracts with a couple of hospitals to staff their emergency departments. They carefully limited those endeavors at first, because at a time when the earliest EM residency programs were just getting started, the supply of capable physicians was very small. Eventually, Fischer-Mangold would have dozens of contracts across many states.

Dr. Fischer was always cautious and measured, Dr. Mangold enthusiastic and optimistic. At the memorial celebration, Dr. Fischer told of how convinced he was that Karl was insane, and that they would never be able to get emergency physicians to work in Alaska. Yet Karl thought the right marketing of the state’s wilderness beauty would lure physicians who had been attracted to the rugged individualism of the specialty, and he was right.

Alaska, as America’s “last frontier,” still attracts those with pioneering spirit: that essential inner drive that Dr. Karl Mangold displayed in all he did to help in the founding of emergency medicine as a specialty.

Editor’s note: Contributions in Dr. Karl Mangold’s memory may be made to the Emergency Medicine Foundation (www.EMFoundation.org).