[1][2] In a memorial, four of his colleagues wrote that Wilson:[2] was a tall, slim grey-haired eminence, always properly clad in his long, white coat while at work.
[1] Wilson joined the Navy the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and became a flight surgeon, with the rank of lieutenant commander.
[1][2] After the war, Wilson was planning to join the faculty of Cheloo Medical School[3] in China, but instead took a position as a clinical instructor at the Stanford University School of Medicine campus in San Francisco when he learned that the Communist regime in China had closed Cheloo to foreigners.
[2] In 1953 he became a professor at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon, later being appointed dean of the Faculty of Medical Sciences there.
In that year he received the Alwin C. Rambar Award for "excellence and compassion in patient care and in dealing with all members of the Hospital community.