Individual Details
David Elwood Briles
(26 May 1945 - )
The following information on David Elwood Briles is based on his curriculum vitae as of February 4, 2003; the personal knowledge of his sister Susan Briles Kniebes; and information provided by David and by David's and Susan's parents, Worthie Elwood Briles and Clara Ruth Wilson Briles:
David was born at Mitchell Field, Hempstead, Long Island, New York, while his father Worthie Elwood Briles was serving in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. At the time, Elwood was a Private working in the laboratory of the base's hospital. (How Elwood ended up working in the hospital is described in the Notes elsewhere in these Family Tree Maker files for David's sister Susan Marie Briles.) David was born in the base hospital where his father was working. Because of this, Elwood was able to visit his wife Ruth and David in the hospital even though he was on duty at the time of David's birth and technically not able to see his family.
Before this visit, Elwood and Ruth had decided to name David "Robert Connally Briles," the "Robert" for Ruth's father Robert Pierce Wilson, and the "Connally" for the maiden name of Elwood's mother Leona Hays Connally. However, during this visit, Elwood decided that he did indeed want his son named for him as long as his first name was neither "Worthie" nor "Elwood." So Elwood and Ruth decided to name their new son David Elwood Briles and to call him "David."
David attended grade school and junior high in College Station, Texas, and junior high and high school in DeKalb, Illinois.
While in junior high in College Station, David took trumpet lessons from Colonel Richard Dunn, a World War I veteran who was also a retired director of the famous Aggie Marching Band at Texas A&M University, where David's father was a faculty member in the Poultry Science Department. David remembers practicing with the junior high's band, but does not remember ever playing with them at any ball games or marching with them. He remembers that the only other trumpet player in that band was a "tom girl from the country whose folks ran a dairy farm south of College Station."
Once the family moved to DeKalb, Illinois, in 1957, David was in the Junior High School Band. While in this band, he remembers marching down the main street of DeKalb with the band on at least one occasion and playing in at least one concert. In an email to his sister Susan dated May 25, 2004, David recalled that, "by all accounts, we [the band] were terrible."
In the same email, David recalled that he started out playing the trumpet but moved to baritone and then later to the E-flat base and eventually Sousaphone when the band director needed students to play those instruments.
Following high school in DeKalb, David received a B.S. in Zoology from the University of Texas in Austin in 1967, where he worked in the laboratory of Wilson Stone in the UT Genetics Foundation whenever possible. In 1973, he received a Ph.D. in Immunogenetics from Rockefeller University in New York City. At Rockefeller University, David was a member of Edward Tatum's lab for a few years where he worked with Dr. Curtiss Williams on the inheritance of immunologic tolerance. He then switched labs and worked in the laboratory of Dr. Richard M. Krause on the inheritance of antibody binding sites. Krause was part of the laboratory of Bacteriology headed by Macklin McCarty. David's first desk in the lab was the same desk that Dr. McCarty had used when he had done bench work in the lab years earlier.
Following graduated school, David worked as a Research Fellow in the Department of Pathology of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, from 1973 through 1975. From 1975 through 1978, he was a Research Instructor at the same institution. At Washington University, David received training in the laboratory of Dr. Joseph Davie. It was in that lab that he also worked with Drs. Latham Claflin, Moon Nahm, Roger Pelumtter, Joyce Schroer, and others also training in the same laboratory.
In 1978, David joined the Department of Microbiology at the University of Alabama in Birmingham as an Assistant Professor. He has been a full Professor at UAB since 1985 and is currently a Professor in the Departments of Microbiology, Pediatrics, and Comparative Medicine. His fields of specialization are bacterial pathogenesis and vaccines. His colleagues at UAB included Drs. Max D. Cooper, John F. Kearney, John Volanakis, Jerry McGhee, Susan Hollingshead, and Moon Nahm.
For information on the vital parts that David and his Aunt Jewell Boyd Briles played in the safe delivery of David's nephew Dustin Lincoln Moriarty on October 13, 1981, see the Note elsewhere in these Family Tree Maker Files for Margaret Jewell Boyd, the wife of David's father's brother, Connally Oran Briles.
David married Dr. Marilyn Crain in Birmingham on April 23, 1983. Their first child, Rachel Florence Briles, was born in Birmingham on May 9, 1984. Their second child, Travis Crain Briles, was born, also in Birmingham, on November 25, 1985. See the Notes on Marilyn, Rachel, and Travis elsewhere in these Family Tree Maker files.
Over his career, David has been involved in a large number of professional activities. As of February 4, 2003, these included member of the UAB Cellular and Molecular Biology Steering Committee and Promotions Committee; member of the Editorial Advisory Board of "The Journal of Molecular and Cellular Immunology"; member of the Editorial Board of "Infection and Immunity"; Ad Hoc Reviewer for the Veteran's Administration, National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Health BM1 and BM2 study sections; and member of the Publications Committee of the American Association of Immunologists.
As of September 2004, David currently had 12 patents, most of them involving in one way or another the vaccine that he developed for pneumococcal pneumonia.
On numerous occasions, David has been invited speaker and lecturer at professional society meeting and at universities all over the United States as well as in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, England, Finland, France, Italy, Iceland, Japan, Korea, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland.
He has taught courses in the fields of immunology, immunogenetics, bacterial pathogenesis, and bacteriology over his career and is currently teaching microbial pathogenesis in the UAB Graduate Immunology Course and Dental/Optometry Microbiology Course and respiratory pathogens in the UAB Medical Microbiology Course.
As of September 2004, David was the sole or joint author of over 150 reviewed publications and the joint author of 45 reviews, book chapters, or books.
David's hobby has been trees--at the other end of the size spectrum from the bacteria that are the subject of his research at UAB. When he was in high school, his mother Ruth Wilson Briles remembers him choosing the occupation of Forest Ranger to write about when he was required to write about what he wanted to do as a career. When he was a Research Fellow in St. Louis, he spent so much time at the arboretum there and learned so much about trees that he was able to reclassify a number of trees that the arboretum that had misidentified at earlier times. His parents' farm in Sycamore, Illinois, has several groves of black walnut trees (planted for veneer lumber) that the family planted there, the first two groves in the 1971 and the third grove in the 1990. When David is at the farm, he always, even in COLD weather, spends time pruning and otherwise tending to those tree, sometimes to the consternation of his wife, parents, and sisters, and even sometimes Rachel and Travis, his children, who are afraid he'll fall when he's up on a ladder pruning the upper branches.
Below is a poem entitled "Pruning the Tallest Branches" that Rachel wrote about her father and included as one of her senior readings the month before she graduated from the Alabama School of Fine Arts in May 2002:
Pruning the Tallest Branches
Teach me how to prune the tallest branches of the walnut trees,
how to plant them in perfect rows
so they will grow straight.
I need help with my studies,
with the small details of my future,
whether I should save lives or make them.
I can't comprehend why generals call the bloody fields their theatres,
why our breath looks like smoke when we breathe,
why I laugh when I am crying.
Show me how you grew such strong hands
so I can help you walk the weak up flights of stairs,
wave my hands through flames
to make children think I'm magic.
Tell me your stories,
make a map of them
so I can hoard them like your jars of pennies,
Come teach me how to store the aging shovels in the garage,
how to turn the ignition key of a car.
Show me which pedal stops me or lets me go.
For a poem that David wrote following the death of his grandfather Worthie Harwood Briles, see the Note for Worthy elsewhere in these Family Tree Maker files.
David was born at Mitchell Field, Hempstead, Long Island, New York, while his father Worthie Elwood Briles was serving in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. At the time, Elwood was a Private working in the laboratory of the base's hospital. (How Elwood ended up working in the hospital is described in the Notes elsewhere in these Family Tree Maker files for David's sister Susan Marie Briles.) David was born in the base hospital where his father was working. Because of this, Elwood was able to visit his wife Ruth and David in the hospital even though he was on duty at the time of David's birth and technically not able to see his family.
Before this visit, Elwood and Ruth had decided to name David "Robert Connally Briles," the "Robert" for Ruth's father Robert Pierce Wilson, and the "Connally" for the maiden name of Elwood's mother Leona Hays Connally. However, during this visit, Elwood decided that he did indeed want his son named for him as long as his first name was neither "Worthie" nor "Elwood." So Elwood and Ruth decided to name their new son David Elwood Briles and to call him "David."
David attended grade school and junior high in College Station, Texas, and junior high and high school in DeKalb, Illinois.
While in junior high in College Station, David took trumpet lessons from Colonel Richard Dunn, a World War I veteran who was also a retired director of the famous Aggie Marching Band at Texas A&M University, where David's father was a faculty member in the Poultry Science Department. David remembers practicing with the junior high's band, but does not remember ever playing with them at any ball games or marching with them. He remembers that the only other trumpet player in that band was a "tom girl from the country whose folks ran a dairy farm south of College Station."
Once the family moved to DeKalb, Illinois, in 1957, David was in the Junior High School Band. While in this band, he remembers marching down the main street of DeKalb with the band on at least one occasion and playing in at least one concert. In an email to his sister Susan dated May 25, 2004, David recalled that, "by all accounts, we [the band] were terrible."
In the same email, David recalled that he started out playing the trumpet but moved to baritone and then later to the E-flat base and eventually Sousaphone when the band director needed students to play those instruments.
Following high school in DeKalb, David received a B.S. in Zoology from the University of Texas in Austin in 1967, where he worked in the laboratory of Wilson Stone in the UT Genetics Foundation whenever possible. In 1973, he received a Ph.D. in Immunogenetics from Rockefeller University in New York City. At Rockefeller University, David was a member of Edward Tatum's lab for a few years where he worked with Dr. Curtiss Williams on the inheritance of immunologic tolerance. He then switched labs and worked in the laboratory of Dr. Richard M. Krause on the inheritance of antibody binding sites. Krause was part of the laboratory of Bacteriology headed by Macklin McCarty. David's first desk in the lab was the same desk that Dr. McCarty had used when he had done bench work in the lab years earlier.
Following graduated school, David worked as a Research Fellow in the Department of Pathology of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, from 1973 through 1975. From 1975 through 1978, he was a Research Instructor at the same institution. At Washington University, David received training in the laboratory of Dr. Joseph Davie. It was in that lab that he also worked with Drs. Latham Claflin, Moon Nahm, Roger Pelumtter, Joyce Schroer, and others also training in the same laboratory.
In 1978, David joined the Department of Microbiology at the University of Alabama in Birmingham as an Assistant Professor. He has been a full Professor at UAB since 1985 and is currently a Professor in the Departments of Microbiology, Pediatrics, and Comparative Medicine. His fields of specialization are bacterial pathogenesis and vaccines. His colleagues at UAB included Drs. Max D. Cooper, John F. Kearney, John Volanakis, Jerry McGhee, Susan Hollingshead, and Moon Nahm.
For information on the vital parts that David and his Aunt Jewell Boyd Briles played in the safe delivery of David's nephew Dustin Lincoln Moriarty on October 13, 1981, see the Note elsewhere in these Family Tree Maker Files for Margaret Jewell Boyd, the wife of David's father's brother, Connally Oran Briles.
David married Dr. Marilyn Crain in Birmingham on April 23, 1983. Their first child, Rachel Florence Briles, was born in Birmingham on May 9, 1984. Their second child, Travis Crain Briles, was born, also in Birmingham, on November 25, 1985. See the Notes on Marilyn, Rachel, and Travis elsewhere in these Family Tree Maker files.
Over his career, David has been involved in a large number of professional activities. As of February 4, 2003, these included member of the UAB Cellular and Molecular Biology Steering Committee and Promotions Committee; member of the Editorial Advisory Board of "The Journal of Molecular and Cellular Immunology"; member of the Editorial Board of "Infection and Immunity"; Ad Hoc Reviewer for the Veteran's Administration, National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Health BM1 and BM2 study sections; and member of the Publications Committee of the American Association of Immunologists.
As of September 2004, David currently had 12 patents, most of them involving in one way or another the vaccine that he developed for pneumococcal pneumonia.
On numerous occasions, David has been invited speaker and lecturer at professional society meeting and at universities all over the United States as well as in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, England, Finland, France, Italy, Iceland, Japan, Korea, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland.
He has taught courses in the fields of immunology, immunogenetics, bacterial pathogenesis, and bacteriology over his career and is currently teaching microbial pathogenesis in the UAB Graduate Immunology Course and Dental/Optometry Microbiology Course and respiratory pathogens in the UAB Medical Microbiology Course.
As of September 2004, David was the sole or joint author of over 150 reviewed publications and the joint author of 45 reviews, book chapters, or books.
David's hobby has been trees--at the other end of the size spectrum from the bacteria that are the subject of his research at UAB. When he was in high school, his mother Ruth Wilson Briles remembers him choosing the occupation of Forest Ranger to write about when he was required to write about what he wanted to do as a career. When he was a Research Fellow in St. Louis, he spent so much time at the arboretum there and learned so much about trees that he was able to reclassify a number of trees that the arboretum that had misidentified at earlier times. His parents' farm in Sycamore, Illinois, has several groves of black walnut trees (planted for veneer lumber) that the family planted there, the first two groves in the 1971 and the third grove in the 1990. When David is at the farm, he always, even in COLD weather, spends time pruning and otherwise tending to those tree, sometimes to the consternation of his wife, parents, and sisters, and even sometimes Rachel and Travis, his children, who are afraid he'll fall when he's up on a ladder pruning the upper branches.
Below is a poem entitled "Pruning the Tallest Branches" that Rachel wrote about her father and included as one of her senior readings the month before she graduated from the Alabama School of Fine Arts in May 2002:
Pruning the Tallest Branches
Teach me how to prune the tallest branches of the walnut trees,
how to plant them in perfect rows
so they will grow straight.
I need help with my studies,
with the small details of my future,
whether I should save lives or make them.
I can't comprehend why generals call the bloody fields their theatres,
why our breath looks like smoke when we breathe,
why I laugh when I am crying.
Show me how you grew such strong hands
so I can help you walk the weak up flights of stairs,
wave my hands through flames
to make children think I'm magic.
Tell me your stories,
make a map of them
so I can hoard them like your jars of pennies,
Come teach me how to store the aging shovels in the garage,
how to turn the ignition key of a car.
Show me which pedal stops me or lets me go.
For a poem that David wrote following the death of his grandfather Worthie Harwood Briles, see the Note for Worthy elsewhere in these Family Tree Maker files.
Events
| Birth | 26 May 1945 | Mitchell Field, Hempstead, Long Island, New York |  | ||
| Marriage | 10 May 1970 | Rockefeller University, New York, New York County, n.y. - Eve Barak | | ||
| Marriage | 23 Apr 1983 | Birmingham, Jefferson County, Alabama - Marilyn Jean Crain | |
Families
| Spouse | Eve Barak ( - ) |
| Spouse | Marilyn Jean Crain (1949 - ) |
| Child | Rachel Florence Briles (1984 - ) |
| Child | Travis Crain Briles (1985 - ) |
| Father | Worthie Elwood Briles (1918 - 2016) |
| Mother | Clara Ruth Wilson (1919 - 2011) |
| Sibling | Susan Marie Briles (1943 - ) |
| Sibling | Sara Jean Briles (1953 - ) |
Endnotes
1. Original Briles Family Genealogy Information Collected by Worthie Elwood Briles, Susan Marie Briles Kniebes, Sara Jean Br.
2. Original Briles Family Genealogy Information Collected by Worthie Elwood Briles, Susan Marie Briles Kniebes, and Sara Jea.
3. Original Briles Family Genealogy Information Collected by Worthie Elwood Briles, Susan Marie Briles Kniebes, and Sara Jea.