Lay M. Fox ’46

President Lyndon Johnson was a gall-bladder-surgery patient at Bethesda (Md.) Naval Medical Center when he met Dr. Lay Fox, the hospital’s chief of medicine. Shortly afterward, the surgeon general told Lay the White House requested his assignment there as a cardiologist to treat Johnson’s ailing heart. Lay then traveled often on Johnson’s trips to foreign head-of-state meetings and to his ranch in Texas.

After retiring as a Navy captain, Lay became medical director at DC General Hospital, then director of Georgetown University Hospital’s Heart Station until retiring in 1997. His beloved wife, Jean, died that year.

When Lay died April 23, 2012, his home was one he had built in Burnet, Texas, in a part of the United States he had discovered while caring for our Texan president. During several retirement years there he served with the East Lake Buchanan Volunteer Fire Department.

Lay’s survivors include his children, Catherine (“Kitty”) Fox Hessler, Lay C., Peter T., Emily W., Andrew M., and James M. Fox; his brother, Joe; sisters Margaret Rawls and Anne Fox; 14 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. The class joins them in thankfulness for his life.