COA Announces 2018 Award Recipients

(April 2018) The Columbus Osteopathic Association (COA) will present its highest honors at the Annual Meeting & Dinner, April 10, at The Worthington Inn. Awards are given annually to recognize exemplary accomplishments in personal, scientific, community and professional affairs, especially in service to the osteopathic profession.

The Distinguished Service Award will posthmously honor Kevin B. Olson, DO, PhD. The Advocate Award will be presented to Charles G. Vonder Embse, DO.

James F. Sosnowski, DO, Distinguished Service Award
Named for Captain James F. Sosnowski, DO, the Distinguished Service Award, was instituted in 1988 in memory of the only DO killed in action in Vietnam. On February 16, 1968, a mortar shell directly hit a field hospital in Tay Ninh, Vietnam, where Dr. Sosnowski, who trained at Doctors Hospital in Columbus, was in the operating room with his patient, an American soldier. Both were killed instantly. Dr. Sosnowski, who was president of his graduating class at Des Moines University College of Osteopathic Medicine, was two weeks shy of his 28th birthday.

William I. Linder, DO, Advocate Award
The Advocate Award, established in 1997, is named in memory of William I. Linder, DO, who served as editor of the COA publication called The Advocate. The newsletter allowed him to marry his writing skills to his great love of medicine. Many of his articles were called prophetic in their ability to predict some of the ways in which medicine has evolved. Dr. Linder was a great proponent of osteopathic medicine and osteopathic medical education. One of the songs he loved to play on his guitar (he was not only a skilled physician and talented writer, but also a musician) was one he wrote himself about Dr. Andrew Taylor Still.