Oliver E. Comstock Sr.

Angel to tuberculars started Adams Street Mission

At age 54, he came to Tucson in 1909 to do Baptist missionary work, but soon found his calling on the edge of town in a ghetto populated by hundreds of people with tuberculosis.

The next year he opened a charity hospital, the Adams Street Mission. He arranged for food, clothing and religion to be distributed to the sick in what was commonly known as Tent City.

Comstock was the first to show compassion for the "lungers" who came to the dry desert hoping for a miracle cure. They continued to come for decades, clear past 1928 and the establishment of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center to serve veterans suffering from tuberculosis.