The Daily Item, Sunbury, PA

Lewisburg Region

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December 7, 2012

Dr. Coppola will speak Dec. 17 at the Lewisburg Sunset Rotary Club

The Daily Item

LEWISBURG — Dr. Christopher Coppola, currently a Geisinger physician, will speak about his experience as an Air Force pediatric surgeon deployed in Iraq at the Lewisburg Sunset Rotary Club, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Dec. 17.

Dr. Coppola was first deployed in 2005, weeks prior to the first democratically held Iraqi elections, and again in 2007, at the height of the “Surge.” He recounted his experiences in a memoir titled Coppola: A Pediatric Surgeon in Iraq.   

The memoir presents the true-life account of United States Air Force pediatric surgeon Lt. Col. Dr. Chris Coppola. It describes his experiences through two deployments in Operation Iraqi Freedom inside a military trauma hospital at Balad Air Base, just 49 miles north of Baghdad. Raw and powerfully moving, it reveals how one man’s extraordinary courage and commitment to children survived and flourished even as he witnessed some of the most unspeakable horrors of war.

Dr. Coppola’s presentation will attempt to describe the process of tending to the wounds of soldiers and civilians, many of them gravely wounded Iraqi children, amid the chaos and risks of a military trauma hospital. A question and answer period will be followed by a book signing.

Dr. Coppola received his medical degree from the John Hopkins University School of Medicine, trained in surgery at Yale University, and completed pediatric surgery specialty training at the Children’s National Medical Center. He has served as the consultant to the Surgeon General of the Air Force in pediatric surgery and has completed humanitarian missions to Haiti and Brazil. He lives in Danville, Pennsylvania with his wife and two sons.

 

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