Donald S. Coffey was born on October 10, 1932 in Bristol, Virginia. He attended King College there before transferring to the University of East Tennessee. In 1957, Coffey moved to Baltimore to work for Westinghouse, after which he took night classes at the Hopkins night school (McCoy College) and eventually began to work for the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the Brady Research Laboratory. This led Coffey to apply to the Department of Physiological Chemistry in the medical school for his graduate education. Coffey subsequently received his Ph.D. in 1964, became a professor of urology in the School of Medicine, and served as editor for many scholarly journals. In this oral history, Coffey discusses his early life, how he came to work at Hopkins, and his colleagues and work in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. This oral history is part of the Mame Warren oral histories series.