A recent addition to the staff of the Physical Reconditioning Service at Wakeman Convalescent Hospital is Man Mountain Dean.  The one time dazzler of the Groan and Grunt circuit is hard at work on the morale angle of physical reconditioning.

Few people recognize the old boy these days.  First he answers now to the name he brought in to the Army way back when bows and arrows were in vogue.  As Frank Leavitt, his service started in 1906 when he joined the second intervention in Cuba where he served until 1909.  Later he saw action in Mexico, later still in World War I.

Then came the groan and grunt tour as Man Mountain Dean in which time he piled up a more than sizable fortune.  As the years passed his name and fame hit all corners of the world and Dean became a legend.  On December 7, 1941, when the new war became a reality, he laid by the rosined shoes and sweaty trunks and shoved his big frame back into OD's.  With his knowledge of fighting he was a cinch for action and saw it aplenty in Africa.  Now he is back doing another kind of fighting, working with the patients at Wakeman.

"The Wakeman Probe", May 24, 1945

By June DeSpain, 5/01/2011, Nurses Assistant and Wakeman Hospital