Claude Moore papers

A native of southwest Virginia, Dr. Claude Donald Moore was born in 1892 and died in 1991. He was a 1916 graduate of the medical school at the University of Virginia. Dr. Moore spent his childhood in Radford, Virginia, later moving to Roanoke where he attended high school. Upon his graduation in 1911, Moore took courses at Roanoke College, then crossed the Blue Ridge to Charlottesville where he enrolled at UVa in 1912. That fall, he joined the football team, against the advice of some of his professors, and successfully balanced academics, athletics, and a Pathology Department assistantship for the next four years. These accomplishments were a source of continuing pride to him, along with the 1915 season victory over Yale.

Moore interned at the Cornell Medical Center. With U.S. involvement in World War One eminent, he enlisted in the medical corps and shipped out in the fall of 1918. For a year after the armistice of November 1918, Moore remained in the medical corps in France, attaining the rank of Captain. He returned to private practice in Roanoke in 1920.

General medicine held Moore's interest for six years, but he began to feel the need for additional training. In 1926, the Mayo Clinic accepted him in its radiology program, and he became a specialist in that service. After the Mayo residency, he took the position of full professor and Radiology department head for the George Washington University Hospital in January 1930. Moore remained in the Washington, D.C. area for the rest of his professional career, eventually turning to private practice exclusively. He retired from medicine in 1956. Moore shrewdly capitalized on the regional post-war development boom, and his investments in real estate west of Washington proved immensely lucrative. His philanthropic interests included a $300,000 gift to the University of Virginia Medical School for the library which bears his name. The Claude Moore Charitable Foundation continues to sponsor many worthy projects and has made a $12.5 million challenge gift to UVa's School of Medicine for a state-of-the-art medical education building. Additional genealogical information is in the Sarah Ellen Peterman Horton section of "The Peterman Family" by Marguerite Tise.