Volume 47, Number 1, Spring 1999

IN MEMORIAM

HOWARD L. LEWIS/LARRY E. JOYCE

Howard Lewis

The deaths, within days of each other, of Howard L. Lewis and Larry E. Joyce have deprived science reporters of two trusted sources and congenial colleagues. Both Lewis and Joyce had retired relatively recently from the American Heart Association's national staff in Dallas, both bravely faced terminal cancer, and both remained friends with each other and with countless others until the end of their lives. Lewis died April 9 in Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas from cancer of the bile duct. Joyce, who had phoned many mutual friends to report Lewis' death, died exactly three weeks later at his new home in nearby Granbury, Texas, of leukemia. Lewis, 67, is remembered particularly for making science reporters so welcome and well-informed at AHA meetings and news forums, for providing prompt and thorough responses to queries, and for his calm good nature at all times. Joyce, 60, similarly is remembered as a great boss, entertaining conversationalist, and gifted writer. And who can forget their amiable (West Virginia and Texas, respectively) accents? Lewis was born in Madison, WVa, earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at West Virginia University, served in the Air Force during the Korea Conflict, and worked for the Charleston Daily Mail, Business Week, and Modern Hospital before moving to Dallas as AHA's director of health and science news in 1976, retiring to consultant work in 1996. Joyce was born in Dallas, earned his bachelor's degree at Hardin-Simmons University (Abilene) and master's at Texas Tech University (Lubbock); served two combat tours in Vietnam during an Army career that saw him receive numerous medals, pilot's wings, and the grade of lieutenant colonel; managed the European-Middle East edition of Stars & Stripes; and was an AHA vice president before and after (until retiring in 1998) a five-year period as American Medical Association senior vice president of communications and publishing. Lewis campaigned tirelessly but good naturedly for news media attention to science. Joyce also had campaigns, including opposition to use of US military personnel in peacekeeping situations such as Somalia, where his youngest son, Army Ranger Sgt James Casey Joyce (with whom Joyce is buried in Arlington National Cemetery), was killed. (Contributed by Phil Gunby.)

WILLIAM KITAY

William Kitay died December 22 in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was 80 years of age and had been an NASW member since 1951. Born in New York City, Kitay spent the majority of his 50 years as a journalist covering the field of medicine. Kitay started as a general assignment reporter in Ohio with the Springfield Sun. He later joined the Toledo Blade as a features writer and during World War II was the paper's military editor. After the war, Kitay began writing seriously about medicine for the Blade and later joined UPI as a staff correspondent in Indianapolis before becoming the first full-time medical writer at the Birmingham News in Alabama. His beat was the then new Medical College of Alabama and he chronicled some of the earliest efforts to operate on the heart, when open heart surgery was still a dream. During the national polio epidemic of the late 1940s, Kitay lived for a week in an iron lung, so he could write authentically of what it meant to be striken with polio. During this time, his syndicated column "All About Babies" appeared in 620 newspapers and a radio program, "Medicine Today with William Kitay," was relayed to some 80 stations in 11 southern states via the ABC network. In the 1950s, he returned to New York to become the first medical writer for a new health agency that eventually would become the Arthritis Foundation, and later worked for the American Heart Association. In the 1960s, he turned to the field of public relations and spent a decade representing medical colleges, medical centers, pharmaceutical firms, professional medical societies, and a leading liquor company for whom he created a medical research program on hangover. Following a period of free-lance and book writing, Kitay spent more than 20 years as editor for a number of medical publications and peer-reviewed clinical journals. In recent years, he continued his free-lance medical writing and served as a consultant on medical communications for pharmaceutical and medical product firms and organizations in the medical and health fields. (Information provided by the family.)

DOUGLAS SORENSON

NASW has recently learned of the death of Douglas D. Sorenson of Madison, Wisconsin. Sorensen had been an NASW member since 1962.