William Taliaferro Close (June 7, 1924 – January 15, 2009) was an American surgeon who played a major role in stemming a 1976 outbreak of the Ebola virus in Zaire, the first major outbreak of the viral hemorrhagic fever in Central Africa, and preventing its further spread. He was also the father of actress Glenn Close and husband of Bettine Moore Close. Early life William Close was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, on June 7, 1924, minutes after his twin brother Edward Jr. His parents were Elizabeth (née Taliaferro) and Edward Bennett Close, an attorney; his mother was a member of the Taliaferro family, one of the First Families of Virginia. William had two half-sisters, Adelaide Breevort (Close) Riggs and Eleanor Post Close (Eleanor Post Hutton), from his father's first marriage to Post Cereals heiress and General Foods owner Marjorie Merriweather Post. Raised in France, he attended Summer Fields School, Harrow School in England, and then St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. Close enrolled in Harvard College in 1941, leaving the school two years later to marry and to become a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. He served as the personal pilot and interpreter for General Joseph Harper. Following his military service, he attended the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and he trained in surgery at Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan after receiving his medical degree. Career In 1960, he traveled to the Belgian Congo, where he practiced medicine, being the only surgeon in Leopoldville during the Belgian revolutions, met and befriended a young Congolese soldier named Mobutu, and, after Mobutu became president, he, at Mobutu's request, ran the 1,500-bed Mama Yemo Hospital (now Kinshasa General Hospital) named in honor of Mobutu's mother, in the capital city of Kinshasa, Zaire, with the goal of getting health care into rural areas of the country. He served President Mobutu Sese Seko as his personal physician, pilot, director of security, and was Surgeon General of the nation's army. He developed a hospital ship that traveled the Congo, bringing medical care, and, more importantly, medical education to remote village healers. Medical research at the Mama Yemo Hospital was very important to the understanding of the HIV-AIDS disease, and changed the worldwide practice of always repeating C-Section deliveries. In the mid-1970s, the Ebola virus broke out at a missionary hospital in rural Yambuku, near the Ebola River. The