I have worked with vaccines since the initiation of my research career at the NIH. One particular focus has been on vaccines for the prevention of viral respiratory disease. RSV has been an abiding interest since starting at NIH where we initiated work on temperature-sensitive mutants as potential live-attenuated vaccine candidates. These progressed to a series of trials in infants and young children which defined the significant protection afforded by prior infection, the optimal level of attenuation, and the importance of genetic stability. Using cohorts of children at Vanderbilt and Dartmouth we defined the clinical impact of RSV in normal, otherwise healthy children. We have demonstrated that primary epithelial cells derived from adenoids are a surrogate for predicting attenuation and replication in young children and shared in the demonstration of the human pathology associated with RSV.