GEORGE L. SMITH JR. ’64, M.D.

GEORGE L. SMITH JR., M.D., a cardiologist, co-owner of the restaurant John Ash and Co., and one of the founders of Viking River Cruises, died Apr. 15, 2014. He was 71. A member of the Commons Club, he received his medical degree from the University of Tennessee. He served in the U.S. Army medical corps in Vietnam before completing his training with a cardiology fellowship in San Francisco. He settled in Santa Rosa, Calif., in 1975, when heart patients had to travel to San Francisco for surgery, and he worked to make heart surgery available in Santa Rosa. A founding member of Cardiology Associates in Santa Rosa and of Northern California Medical Associates, he retired from full-time clinical work two years ago but remained involved in medical administration, teaching residents and system reorganization at Sutter Hospital. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of the California Chapter of the American College of Cardiology and chair of the political action committee, as well as a member of the Board of Overseers at the Hoover Institution. He was a founder of the Sonoma Country Day School. Dr. Nancy Doyle, from whom he was divorced but with whom he remained close, survives, as do his two children, two sisters, and a brother.