ALUMNI Class of 1927 Cornelius J. Kraissl'27 on his hourse, Misty Cornelius J. Kraissl died Feb. 5, 1999. Dr. Kraissl, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon from North Hackensack, N.J., served with the famous Flying Tigers unit of the U.S. Air Force in China during World War II, for which he received a Bronze Star. He served again during the Korean War with the New York Air National Guard, retiring from the military with the rank of brigadier general. He trained in surgery at St. Luke's and Presbyterian hospitals and served as assistant surgeon in the plastic surgery clinic before pursuing a private practice in Bergen County. An avid horseman, Dr. Kraissl served with the Mounted Deputy Sheriffs of Bergen County. He has no known survivors.    Class of 1936 Retired pediatrician Charles F. Shevlin died Aug. 21, 1998. Dr. Shevlin served as a flight surgeon with the U.S. Air Force during World War II. A past president of the Buchanan County Heart Association and member of the advisory board of the National Cystic Fibrosis Research Foundation, he was affiliated with the Thompson Brumm Knepper Clinic in St. Joseph, Mo. He is survived by his wife, Catharine, a son, two daughters, and four grandchildren. Class of 1938 Michael S. Rapp, retired director of the Department of OB/GYN at Staten Island Hospital, died Sept. 13, 1998. Dr. Rapp served with the U.S. Navy during World War II. He leaves behind his wife, Dorothy, a son, a daughter, and two grandchildren. Class of 1940 John Milne, a former faculty member of Dartmouth Medical School and retired internist affiliated for more than 50 years with the Hitchcock Clinic in Hanover, N.H., died Nov. 29, 1998. Dr. Milne had been a selectman in Hanover. He is survived by his wife, Nancy, four sons, a stepson, and 12 grandchildren. . . . C. Gordon Zubrod, a retired oncologist who helped make chemotherapy a standard treatment for cancer, died Jan. 19, 1999, at age 84. Dr. Zubrod spent two decades at the NIH, where he served as scientific director of the National Cancer Institute. He led a group of researchers who helped prove that childhood leukemia was curable. His team of researchers developed a regimen of chemotherapeutic agents to combat various cancers, establishing a precedent still valid today. Dr. Zubrod won the coveted Lasker Award in 1972. He served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during World War II, searching for a substitute for precious quinine to treat malaria. Dr. Zubrod's career included teaching on the faculties of Johns Hopkins, St. Louis University, and the University of Miami, where he was professor and chairman of the Department of Oncology and directed the Florida Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Zubrod made numerous television and radio appearances, speaking on problems relating to cancer. He is survived by his wife, Christina, two daughters, three sons, and 12 grandchildren. Class of 1942 Gustav Bansmer died Aug. 10, 1998. Dr. Bansmer had been suffering from scleroderma and related pulmonary problems. A New York City native, he attended Columbia College before entering P&S. Following his military service, during which he was a medical officer assigned to the Manhattan Project surgical staff, he was board certified in general surgery and family medicine and moved west to Washington. There he worked for many years on the surgical staff of the Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound in Seattle, where he was appointed chief of surgery and chief of staff. In 1959 he founded the Yakima Valley Clinic, a small rural clinic that became the first off-campus teaching unit of the University of Washington School of Medicine, where he was clinical associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine. In addition to a number of scientific papers in the field of thromboembolic disease, he authored many newspaper articles on problems of migrant health and rural health care access. Dr. Bansmer helped develop the "Prosser Plan," a low-cost system of health care screening for senior citizens. Following his retirement, Dr. Bansmer volunteered for the Red Cross and for Project USA, an AMA program providing emergency room care to Sioux Indians on reservations in South Dakota. Surviving him is his wife, Kathleen, a daughter, two sons, and seven grandchildren. . . . Word has been received of the death of Harry R. Potter, a retired psychiatrist from Tenafly, N.J., on May 31, 1998. The cause of death was a cerebrovascular accident. Dr. Potter had been a member of the psychiatry faculty at P&S and an attending physician at Roosevelt Hospital and the Neurological Institute. He leaves his wife, Catharine, a daughter, two sons, and four grandchildren. Dr. Potter and his wife created a named scholarship fund at P&S. Class of 1943M Chester Cassel, an internist from Miami, died Jan. 24, 1999, at age 80. One of the founding physicians at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami, he was honored with the hospital's Concern Award for his compassionate care of patients. Other honors included the Laureate Award and the Ralph O. Claypoole Senior Memorial Award as Outstanding Practitioner of Internal Medicine of the American College of Physicians, of which he was a fellow. He was elected governor for the Florida region of the ACP. An endowed chair in gastroenterology was created in his name at the University of Miami School of Medicine. He served with the U.S. Army Medical Corps during World War II. A consultant to the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, committed to promoting medical knowledge, he produced 12 geriatric educational videos for public television. Following his retirement from full-time practice, Dr. Cassel focused on the health concerns of the elderly and took on the responsibilities of medical director of the geriatric center at Cedars. He leaves his wife, Carol, four daughters, three grandchildren, and a brother. Class of 1943D Word has been received of the death of Stephen S. Goodyear in July 1998, the exact date unknown. Dr. Goodyear had been a member of the clinical psychiatry faculty at Cornell Medical College. His survivors include two daughters and two sons. . . . Wesley M. Oler III, a retired clinical professor of medicine at Georgetown University and personal physician to former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, died of a kidney ailment at age 80 on July 7, 1998. He taught at Georgetown for close to four decades and served as vice chairman of the Department of Medicine and vice president of the medical board and trustee of Washington Hospital Center. An educational fund for medical residents was established there in his name. Dr. Oler served with the U.S. Army Medical Corps in the Phillipines during World War II. A fellow of the American College of Physicians and governor of its Washington, D.C., chapter, he received the ACP's John F. Maher Memorial Laureate Award. His avocations included playing old musical instruments. He also sang with various choral groups. Surviving him are his wife, Virginia, two sons, four grandchildren, and two brothers. Class of 1944 Frank J. Kefferstan II, former vice president and medical director of John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company, died Oct. 3, 1998. A diplomate of the Board of Life Insurance Medicine, Dr. Kefferstan was a specialist in occupational medicine. He is survived by his wife, Jean.          Class of 1946 Nathaniel S. Ritter'46 with Dr. Marjorie lewisohn Nathaniel S. Ritter, a former clinical investigator for Merck & Co. and associate director of the medical department at the National Foundation (March of Dimes), died Feb. 9, 1999. Interning at the Hospital for Joint Diseases, Dr. Ritter pursued residencies at Montefiore Hospital and at the First (Columbia) Division at Bellevue under the tutelage of Nobel laureate Dickinson W. Richards'23. Following military service in the U.S. Navy and several years of private practice, he opted for the more precise rigors of clinical research and, on the urging of Dr. Richards, joined the clinical investigation department at Merck & Co. Those were the heady days of pioneering investigation of steroids and thiazides and Dr. Ritter was very much in the thick of things, organizing clinical trials at hospitals around the country. He left Merck to take on the responsibilities of associate director of the medical department at the March of Dimes. There he worked in the field of birth defects with another P&S legend, Virginia Apgar'33, who was medical director. Dr. Ritter also taught in the Department of Community Medicine at Mount Sinai. His interests ranged widely from medicine to art and music. He felt a keen obligation to P&S, establishing a scholarship fund in his name. He once put his life philosophy in a nutshell: "Everybody who passes through this life should leave the world a little better off than he found it." One longtime friend, Dr. Marjorie Lewisohn, lauded his "precise and caring intellect," recalling him as "the consummate doctor." Class of 1947 Nicholas E. Capeci, a retired cardiologist, died of metastatic lung cancer Jan. 7, 1999. Early in his career Dr. Capeci worked as a clinical investigator for Merck & Co. and moved to Schering as vice president of medical research. He served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. Dr. Capeci leaves behind his wife, Mary Anne, two daughters, and a son. Class of 1953 George R. Edison died Dec. 19, 1998. A specialist in geriatrics and the psychological aspects of illness, Dr. Edison had been clinical professor of medicine at the University of Utah and chairman of the Department of Medicine at Salt Lake Regional Medical Center in Salt Lake City.       Class of 1954 Herbert M. Swartz died Jan. 25, 1999. Having developed active and severe rheumatoid arthritis while still a student at P&S, Dr. Swartz lived and coped with it for the rest of his life. He nevertheless pursued a full-time practice as internist-rheumatologist until the illness took its toll and, taking a three-year psychiatric residency, he shifted to a second medical career. A member of the clinical psychiatry faculty at the University of California at San Francisco, he also served as medical director of Community Mental Health Services for Contra Costa County. Survivors include his wife, Thea, two sons, and two daughters.

Honorary Alumnus and Ardent Apgar Champion Dies at 73 Joseph Butterfield, M.D., a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado and past chairman of the section on perinatology for the American Academy of Pediatrics, died in his sleep on June 1 at age 73. Dr. Butterfield, a pioneer in the care of newborn infants, was pediatrician-in-chief at Denver's Children's Hospital and occupant of a chair created in his name at the University of Colorado. He created the Newborn Center at the hospital in 1965. The center served the needs of the Denver community and outlying rural areas. A co-organizer in 1963 of the Aspen Conference on the Newborn, the longest running conference on newborn health in the world, he helped achieve recognition of neonatology as a specialized field. The April/May 1999 issue of the Journal of Perinatology was dedicated as a festschrift in his honor. His tireless efforts to salute the memory of his mentor, Virginia Apgar'33, including the successful decade-long lobbying campaign that led in 1994 to the issuance of a 20-cent U.S. postage stamp in her name, prompted the P&S Alumni Association to elect him as an honorary member in 1996. It was Dr. Butterfield who created the famous acronym based on Dr. Apgar's name that describes the five elements of the Apgar Score for neonatal health: Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, and Respiration. An avid music lover, Dr. Butterfield was also responsible for the campaign to acquire a matched set of string instruments handcrafted by Dr. Apgar and master luthier Carleen Hutchins. He donated the instruments to P&S as a living Apgar memorial. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including the 1992 Virginia Apgar Award of the section on perinatal pediatrics of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. Butterfield is survived In December 1995, Dr. Butterfield visited P&S to discuss the handmade musical instruments he donated to P&S as a living memorial to Dr. Virginia Apgar. From left are Anke Nolting, associate dean and executive director of alumni relations and development; Dr. Donald Tapley, senior deputy vice president; Dr. Butterfield; Carleen Hutchins; Dr. Nicholas Cunningham, professor of clinical pediatrics and public health; and Dr. John Driscoll Jr., chairman of pediatrics. by his wife, Perry, a daughter, a son, four grandchildren, and two brothers.

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