William H. Sewell ’47

BILL DIED May 9, 1993. With his death our class lost one of its most renowned members.

After V12 and graduation from Princeton, Bill entered the Yale School of Medicine. In our 40th yearbook he described himself as undistinguished when starting out as a medical student. But, as he put it, his fortune changed when he took a fellowship in heart surgery. In that important field he made his career. In 1950, while still a student, he made a primitive heart pump. For that invention our class gave him its achievement award in 1957. The pump is now in the Smithsonian.

Bill reentered the navy during the Korean War and headed the experimental surgery section of the Naval Medical Research Institute. More training and a post as chief resident surgeon at Albany Hospital followed. In 1960, he went to Asheville as a clinical investigator at the Oteen Veterans' Administration Hospital. In 1967, after completing the first of his two books in acquired coronary disease, he went to the Guthrie Clinic in Sayre, Penn., to organize a section of coronary surgery. There, before retiring in 1985, Bill performed 2,556 heart operations.

After retiring, Bill began to study the financial markets with the same care he had given to surgery, but with time set aside for flying his plane and gardening. Although Bill was not a smoker, his death, sadly, was caused by lung cancer. To his widow and his children, Susan, James, Sharon, and Douglas, we extend our deepest sympathy.

The Class of 1947