Dooner was born and grew up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. After Navy service and graduation from Princeton in 1949, he and five other ’48 classmates went through medical school at Johns Hopkins together, graduating in 1953. Dr. Jack Zimmerman, one of these, notes that Dooner was “one of [Baltimore’s] busiest and most respected internists for more than 40 years.” 

His pastimes were tennis, music, and writing. His novel, In My Father’s House, “caught the essence of life at Johns Hopkins,” according to lifelong friend and colleague Dr. Bob Welch ’48.

In our 50th-reunion book, reflecting on college and career, Dooner remarked, “If one can have the good fortune and privilege to associate himself with the best and near-best, there is a chance that he will end up the best person he can be, and live the best life he can live.”

He died July 13, 2015, at age 88. Survivors are his wife, Valerie Wilson; his sister, Hannah Firth; daughters Louisa Murphy and Emily Murphy; stepchildren Eleanor Hartman, Charlotte Harvey, and Colston Young; and three grandchildren.

Undergraduate Class of 1948