Top U.S. Health Official Eyes LSU Medical Post

              DR. WILLIAM FRYE DR. WILLIAM H. STEWART
Top U.S. Health Official
Eves LSU Medical Post
By MARGARET MARTIN
Times Medical Writer
Dr. William Frye of New
Orleans, chancellor of Louisiana
State University Medical Center,
plans to retire by the end of this
fiscal year and the surgeon-gen-eral
of the United States has
been offered the position, The
Times learned yesterday.
Dr. William H. Stewart, sur-geon-
general of the U.S. Public
Health Service in Washington,
D.C, told The Times in a
telephone interview yesterday
that he is considering the
chancellorship as well as other
positions which he has been
offered.
He was appointed to his
present position by former Pres-ident
Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965
and the term expires Oct. 1.
The surgeon-general said that
he will meet with the LSU
Medical Center Committee Satur-day
in New Orleans. The com-mittee
is made up of administra-tive
officials who are interview-ing
people eligible for the job.
Dr. Stewart will be in Shreve-port
today to confer with Dr.
Edgar Hull, dean of the LSU
Medical School in Shreveport and
members of Dr. Hull's staff. He
will give a speech in New
Orleans tomorrow on "compre-hensive
health care." and will
I meet with the medical school
committee in New Orleans Satur-day.
If he accepts the position as
chancellor, Dr. Stewart will
become head of his alma mater.
He graduated from LSU Medical
School in New Orleans in 1945
where he served as student body
president and president of Phi Xi
medical fraternity. He also at-tended
LSU's Baton Rouge cam-pus
in 1941 and 1942 and was a
member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon
social fraternity.
Dr. Stewart was a resident in,
pediatrics at Charity Hospital in
New Orleans and was engaged in
private practice in Alexandria
before joining the health service
in 1951.
He is married to the former
Glendora White of Minden, an
LSU graduate in education.
A baby doctor who turned to
heart specialty, Dr. Stewart was
the 10th man to hold the title as :
head of the U.S. Public Health
Service.
Dr. Stewart had a hand in
fashioning some of the Johnson
administration's health legisla-tive
programs before his appoint-ment.
His pipe-smoking habit was
noted at the time of his
appointment because the public
health service was involved in
the beginning of the big contro-versy
over whether smoking is a
health hazard.
Dr. Stewart said he took up
pipe smoking while an intern in
1945-46 at Philadelphia General
Hospital. He has never been a
cigarette smoker and only rarely
smokes cigars.
The public health o f f i c i a l
joined the service in 1951 and
was first assigned to the office of
surgeon-general some six years
later. It was during the 1957-58
emergency program to supply a
new vaccine to combat an Asian
flu outbreak that he did what he
refers to as "first sergeant
chores" in ramrodding that
program.
Several Top Positions
Before appointment to his
present position, Dr. Stewart was
director of the National Heart
Institute for the National Insti-tutes
of Health He has also
served as assistant to the
surgeon-general, and assistant
director of the National Heart
Institute.
Dr. Stewart has worked as
chief of the Heart Disease
Control Program for the Bureau
of State Services, Division of
Special Health Services and was
head of the Epidemiology Unit,
Thomasville Field Station, Com-municable
Disease Center, Tho-masville,
Ga., and for the Grants
and Training Branch of the
National Institutes of Health,
National Heart Institutes.
He is a native of Minneapolis,
Minn., and attended the Univer-sity
of Minnesota. He served in
the U.S. Army Medical Corps
from 1946 to 1948 and as a
physician in the Veterans Admin-istration
Outpatient Clinic, St.
Paul. Minn.