Dr. R. Donald woodson, 1931-2012: MCO doctor loved to teach, ran talks on chest surgery

PORT CLINTON -- Dr. R. Donald Woodson, a surgeon and an early faculty member of the former Medical College of Ohio, died Monday in the Jane Baker House, a skilled care home at the Otterbein North Shore community, Lakeside, Ohio. He was 80.

He had cirrhosis of the liver caused by exposure to hepatitis B in his surgical career, his wife, Sharon, said.

Dr. Woodson of Ottawa County's Catawba Island Township was also a University of Toledo law school graduate. He was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1984 and reviewed medical malpractice cases for a Port Clinton law firm.

He retired from medicine in the late 1990s after he returned from southern California, where he was on the staff of several hospitals.

He became associate professor of surgery at MCO, the current UT Medical Center, on Jan. 1, 1969, hired the previous November by MCO trustees.

"He really liked to teach. He wanted to share because he was so enthusiastic," his wife said. "His philosophy [was] there is always a cure."

He helped run conferences on chest surgery, recalled Dr. Barney Wisinger, a pulmonologist, an MCO faculty member, and a friend.

"He was very well trained," said Dr. Wisinger, former director of a teaching program at Toledo Hospital. "We got along very well together."

Dr. Woodson eschewed painkillers and advocated electrical nerve stimulation devices for relief. He encouraged patients to get moving early in their recovery.

"He walked patients down the hall himself with his 3-inch-heel cowboy boots," his wife said.

He was on the medical staff at Toledo Hospital, St. Luke's Hospital in Maumee, Bellevue Hospital, Magruder Hospital in Port Clinton, and Firelands Regional Medical Center in Sandusky.

He was born Dec. 24, 1931, in Winfield, Kan., to Ruth and Riley D. Woodson. He was salutatorian of his 1949 class at Shawnee Mission High School. He played basketball as an undergraduate at the University of Kansas and was a 1956 graduate of its medical school. He was an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Illinois medical college when MCO hired him.

He called his Navy service as a medical officer aboard the USS Constellation the best time of his life, his wife said. "He was a guy's guy."

He liked to sketch and play the piano.

He fished in Alaska, Canada, and Mexico, and hunted in Wyoming.

"He was a Mensa man all the way around," his wife said. "There wasn't a subject I could ask that man he didn't know."

He was formerly married to Virginia Nalley Woodson and Donna Woodson.

Surviving are his wife, Sharon Pocisk Woodson, whom he married Dec. 31, 1991; sons, Riley D. and Wade C. Woodson; stepson, Jeffrey Pocisk; stepdaughters, Sheri Sobel and Monica Morgan; stepmother, Virginia Maria Woodson; sister, Marjorie Woodson Brownlee, and three grandsons.

Private family services were to be held Saturday in Kansas City, Mo. The family suggests tributes to the Humane Society of Ottawa County.

Contact Mark Zaborney at: mzaborney@theblade.com or 419-724-6182.