William Minor Deyerle (23 May 1916–30 December 2004), orthopedic surgeon, was born in Bluefield, West Virginia, and was the son of Elise Ellis Davis Deyerle and Oscar Mortimer Deyerle, a coal operator. He attended Davidson College in North Carolina for three years, but did not graduate. He enrolled in medical school at the University of Virginia in 1936 and received an M.D. in 1940. Deyerle spent a year as an intern at Roper Hospital, in Charleston, South Carolina, from 1940 to 1941. He moved to Richmond to continue his training at the Medical College of Virginia, where he also served as an instructor in orthopedic surgery. In December 1943 Deyerle received a commission as a lieutenant in the medical department of the United States Army, and later he was promoted to captain. During his service through June 1946 he honed his surgical skills at military hospitals across the country and in the Pacific theater, including the Philippines and Japan.

Deyerle returned to Richmond to complete his training in 1946 and 1947 as a resident at the Crippled Children's Hospital (later Children's Hospital), which he continued to serve as a volunteer surgeon throughout the rest of his career. He was a member of the clinical faculty at MCV for the next forty years and also served as acting chair of the orthopedic surgery division from 1974 to 1976. Deyerle taught medical residents at the Hunter Holmes McGuire Veterans Administration Hospital (later Richmond Veterans Administration Medical Center), where he was an attending physician and chief of orthopedic surgery from 1969 to 1979. He also maintained a highly respected private practice as an orthopedic surgeon until he retired about 1994.

By 1958 Deyerle had refined a technique, first used early in the twentieth century, of using internal pins to repair bone fractures. He developed a plate to guide the accurate placement of multiple pins holding the hip and thigh bones together, a process that allowed patients to be ambulatory during the healing process. Deyerle believed that patients with fractures in their lower extremities needed to become mobile as quickly as possible to encourage better healing of bones and to preserve muscle function. In 1961 he received a patent for his hip-setting pin and plate. The innovation placed Deyerle in the national spotlight as medical facilities around the country adopted his pin system for the fixation of fractures in the upper femur. Although it later fell out of favor, the Deyerle method served as the forerunner of the modern cannulated screw systems. Early in the 1970s Deyerle developed a total hip prosthesis that did not require cement for implantation, a device he patented in 1974. He received additional patents in 1974, 1977, and 1987 for components and surgical tools used in hip replacements.

Deyerle published dozens of articles in medical journals, including the American Journal of Nursing, the American Journal of Orthopedics, and Virginia Medical Monthly. He contributed chapters to such books as Current Practice in Orthopaedic Surgery, 1966 (1966) and served as a guest editor of the journal Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research in 1964, 1967, and 1973. In 1952 Deyerle became a fellow of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and later sat on its executive committee. He served as secretary-treasurer of the Virginia Orthopedic Society during the 1950s and as president for the 1959–1960 term. A longtime officer in the Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons, Deyerle served a term as president from 1962 to 1963. During this period he also produced a demonstration film of his technique for the fixation of hip fractures.

In Richmond on 12 September 1942 Deyerle married Frances Mozelle Hood. They had two daughters. William Minor Deyerle died of respiratory failure on 30 December 2004 in Richmond and was buried at Greenwood Memorial Gardens, in Goochland County. In 2005 the General Assembly memorialized Deyerle as a "dedicated healer and influential educator."

Sources Consulted:
Birth date in Virginia World War II History Commission, Separation Notices and Reports, 1942–1950, Accession 23573, State Government Records Collection, Record Group 68, Library of Virginia (LVA); Marriage Register, Richmond City, Bureau of Vital Statistics (BVS), Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, LVA; Richmond Times-Dispatch, 13 Sept. 1942; University of Virginia Alumni News 32 (May 1944): 25 (portrait); Directory of Medical Specialists (1979–1980), 2:1879; Leslie Klenerman, ed., The Evolution of Orthopaedic Surgery (2002), 59–60; death notice and obituary in Richmond Times-Dispatch, 3, 7 Jan. 2005; memorial in Acts of the General Assembly of Virginia (1730– ), 2005 sess., 3:2868–2869 (quotation).

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Katharine E. Harbury.

How to cite this page:
Katharine E. Harbury, "William Minor Deyerle (1916–2004)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2024 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Deyerle_William_Minor, accessed [today's date]).

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