THE Society of Interventional Radiol-

ogy (SIR) celebrates its 30th anniver-sary this year. During these 30 years, SIR has grown from a closed club with fewer than 100 members to an open society with 4,000 members. The his-tory of the Society and its exciting growth is detailed on the SIR web site, www.sirweb.org. This issue of JVIR also contains commemorative articles of some founding members on the for-mative years of SIR, its transition to an open society, perspectives for its fu-ture, and the history of nonvascular interventions. However, only a few SIR members remember the birth and early years of interventional radiol-ogy. It is our intention to bring these days back to you by recounting how interventional radiology was born and how it grew, particularly in the area of vascular interventions. This article is a remembrance, a col-lection of the highlights of our memo-ries of events that happened 25–40 years ago, documented by historic pic-tures. Fortunately, the human memory has the most generous and merciful nature; it encrypts in the mind exciting and memorable events while repress-ing unemotional or disturbing occa-sions or at least permitting us to look at them differently. Many of the mo-mentous events associated with the birth and early years of interventional radiology are still as fresh in our mem-ory as if they occurred yesterday. But, because the human memory is also quite subjective, our memories could be somewhat biased as we take you back into the exciting early years of interventional radiology