Robert Earl Wildermuth — American Medical Record Association Professional Credentials Card

Robert Earl Wildermuth’s professional credentials card from the American Medical Record Association (now the American Health Information Management Association, AHIMA) — the structured documentation of his second career as a medical records administrator, after his 1970 retirement from the Air Force.

What the document records

The card is the AMRA professional standardized form of the era, with sections for Academic Honors, Membership in Student Organizations, Student Activities, and Scholarship and/or Grants. Robert Earl’s photograph (small black-and-white head shot) appears at the upper left. The handwritten entries below include a chronological list of memberships and registrations, with dates and locations.

Legible entries include:

• 7-14-75 — “Am. Med. Recerd. Asso. Chicago, Ill” — his American Medical Record Association registration
• 8-18-72 — “Hlth Tech. U. Delaware” or similar — Health Technology / University connection
• 9/10/40 — “Self. Ormond Beach, Fla” — likely his Florida residence
• 1-18-62 — “Self Tampa, Florida” — his McDill AFB Tampa years
• 10-19-56 — “Onif Oklahoma” — likely McConnell or another Oklahoma assignment
• 8/26/56 — “Onif Midwest City, Okla” — Tinker AFB area

The dates trace his Air Force career assignments through 1970 and then his post-retirement medical-records career through the 1970s.

In the memoir’s frame

Robert Earl’s 1989 memoir records his second career: after the 1970 Air Force retirement and a year of unsatisfying high-school teaching at Seabreeze High School in Daytona Beach, “I inquired at a new University that had just opened in Orlando, the Florida Technological University later to become the University of Central Florida. I found that this university had a School of Health and one of the degrees offered in that school was a degree in Medical Record Administration. So at the rather advanced age for students, 48, I enrolled in college and went to work on another degree.”

He worked part-time at a local hospital while studying and earned the degree in two years (1972–1974). He then went to work for Blue Cross of Florida as Hospital Representative and later as Charge Auditor, “making sure that the Blue Cross patients got the health care that Blue Cross was being charged for.” He took early retirement from Blue Cross in 1986 at age 62 to pursue genealogy.

The credentials card visible here is the professional documentation of that second career — the structured record of how a B-24 navigator and Air Force Lt. Col. became a medical records administrator in his fifties.

Source: Wildermuth family archive, transmitted by Chuck Eesley 2026.