A remarkably talented plastic surgeon, Dr. W. Carl Kappes literally changed the lives of countless children and their families in the Tri-State Area. For many years, he was the only surgeon in the community who performed corrective surgery on children with cleft palates and harelips.

Dr. Kappes was born August 16, 1899, in Clifton Forge, Virginia, the son of George Lewis Kappes and Elizabeth Johnson Kappes. He was educated at John Marshall High School, Richmond College and the Medical College of Virginia, all in Richmond, Virginia. Even as a young boy, he dreamed of being a doctor – a dream he worked hard to turn into reality.

He came to Huntington in 1926 as a surgeon at the old C&O Hospital under Dr. Robert Wilkinson. He later went into practice by himself. During World War II, he worked long hours as one of the few surgeons left in Huntington after many of is colleagues had gone into uniform. Over the years, his face was a familiar one at St. Mary's, the C&O Hospital and, later, Cabell Huntington Hospital.

Dr. Kappes was a general surgeon but his specialty was thyroid surgery, He was one of the early members of the American Goiter Society and published a number of scholarly articles dealing with goiter and thyroid problems.

His lasting passion, however, was plastic surgery, especially the repair of cleft palates and harelips in children. The families of many of his young surgery patients couldn't afford to pay but he performed the corrective surgery anyway. On the medical charts for his free patients, he would carefully write the letters "AMDG" – short for "Ad maiorem Dei gloriam', which is Latin for "To the Greater Glory of God."

A scholarship in his honor was established at the Marshall University School of Medicine. He was a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity and Trinity Episcopal Church.

After his retirement from private practice in 1963, Dr. Kappes worked as a member of the staff at the Huntington VA Medical Center until just before his death on December 12, 1979.