Dr. Clinton Warner Jr. believed people should feel connected to, and care for, one another. The concern he felt for others went deep into his marrow, and extended to animals and the environment, friends and family said.
And Dr. Warner didn't just talk about these things, he provided an example, said Dr. David Satcher, director of the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine. Dr. Warner's leadership, as the first chairman of the board of trustees at the Morehouse medical school, was a direct reflection of who he was as a person.
"The Morehouse School of Medicine targets a gap in services in the community," said Dr. Satcher, the 16th surgeon general of the United States. "He knew the needs, and he was indeed responding to an unmet need not just in Atlanta, but in Georgia and even the country."
Dr. Clinton Ellsworth Warner Jr., of Atlanta, died Saturday at home from complications related to lung cancer. He was 87. A funeral is scheduled for 11 a.m., Friday at the Ray Charles Center for the Performing Arts, on the campus of Morehouse College. Entombment will follow at Westview Cemetery. Murray Brothers Funeral Home, Cascade Chapel, is in charge of arrangements.
Dr. Warner was born on the campus of Morehouse College, where his father was a teacher. After graduating from East Depot High School in LaGrange in 1940, Dr. Warner went back to his birthplace for college. But his studies were interrupted by World War II, where he served in the Army from 1942 until 1946. He returned to Morehouse after the war and earned a bachelor's degree in Biology in 1948. Determined to become a physician, Dr. Warner went to Nashville to Meharry Medical College, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1951.
"He did all of this in the face of opposition," Dr. Satcher said. "He fought in a war only to return home to have to fight for civil rights. So not only was he an outstanding physician and surgeon in Atlanta for many years, but he was first and foremost a leader in the community."
His leadership was not self-aggrandizing, and Dr. Warner didn't always take the easy route, but he always did what he felt was right, said his nephew Robert "D.J." Smith II, of Atlanta.
Dr. Warner's practice began in 1956 in St. Louis, following an internship at Chicago's Michael Reese Hospital. He soon moved back to Atlanta and, in 1959, became the college physician and director of the McVicar Infirmary at Spelman College, a post he held until 1995, according to his family. During his early years at Spelman, Dr. Warner was an active participant in the civil rights movement, on a neighborhood and academic level. He not only purchased a home on Fielding Lane in Southwest Atlanta, which at the time was predominately white; but he was a plaintiff in a 1963 lawsuit that desegregated Emory University and the Fulton County Medical and Dental Society, his family said. Four years later, in 1967, Dr. Warner founded the first minority medical surgical group, the Atlanta Surgical Professional Association.
During his medical career, from which he retired in 1996, Dr. Warner served on numerous academic, medical and civic boards and committees, including as a trustee at Morehouse College for 30 years and at the School of Medicine for 25 years.
"He did these things because he thought they were the right things to do, not because he wanted to be part of a movement," his nephew said. "That's the thing you have to understand about him, he didn't choose to be out front, but he did choose to make a difference."
Dr. Warner is survived by his wife, Sally Johnson Warner, of Atlanta; son, Clinton E. "Trey" Warner III, of Lewisburg, W. Va.; and a granddaughter.
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