Tom Rees is the sole surviving founder of AMREF and its Flying Doctors Service. Rees was born to a Welsh Mormon family in America in 1927. At the age of 14, during a fishing trip, his father said to him, “I shall not mind what profession you choose, but I do hope that whatever it is, sometime in your life at least you will find a way to help other people.”
Tom’s family had a strong inclination for medicine and his father worried that young Tom would feel pressured into going in the same direction. There was no need for worry. Tom’s heart led him into medicine and in 1955, to East Grinstead on a Marks Plastic Surgery Fellowship, where he would be under the auspicious tutelage of Sir Archibald McIndoe. Fellow AMREF founder Michael Wood had attended the same programme the year before. It would be through Sir Archibald McIndoe that both Michael Wood and Thomas Rees would meet and become friends for life.
In the following year, Archie invited Tom to come on a trip, “which you will remember for the rest of your life!” According to Archie, Tom was bound to either love Africa or hate it. Love it he did, and he would return over and over again. Tom is now usually expected in East Africa at least once a year.