Former COM-T vice dean, DOM division chief, residency program director dies

Former University of Arizona Department of Medicine faculty member Jay Wesley Smith, MD, died on Feb. 2, 2024, at his home in Tucson at the age of 87.

Dr. Smith was born June 11, 1936, in Pocatello, Idaho, to Jack and Pearl Smith. He graduated as valedictorian from Pocatello High School in 1954, and then attended Columbia University in New York where he graduated cum laude. At Columbia, he met his wife, Sandy, and together they moved to St. Louis, where Dr. Smith earned a medical degree, cum laude, from the Washington University School of Medicine. He completed his internship and residency at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis and, as chief resident, he edited the 19th edition of the “Manual of Medical Therapeutics.”

Afterward, he served two years in the U.S. Public Health Service as an epidemic intelligence service officer through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He then returned to Barnes Hospital for an immunology fellowship with Washington University’s Charles W. Parker, MD, whose pioneering research helped improve treatment of allergies and asthma.

Mrs. Smith said she and her husband wound up in Arizona via an ad in the New England Journal of Medicine he answered to teach housestaff at Phoenix’s St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center where, in June 1970, he became chair of medicine and then program director of internal medicine. A number of students, interns and residents were sent to the hospital for rotations from the University of Arizona College of Medicine, she added.

“The teaching and training of students, interns and residents, I think that was his greatest pleasure,” Mrs. Smith said.

That’s what drew them to Tucson four years later, when Dr. Smith became UArizona College of Medicine program director of the internal medicine residency program and section head of general internal medicine. This was during the administration of Ruben Bressler, MD, as Department of Medicine chair and Louis Kettel, MD, as college dean. In 1981, he was granted a sabbatical and served as an honorary consulting physician at the John Radcliffe Hospital at Oxford University, England. He became vice dean for academic affairs at the college in Tucson in 1990, serving until his retirement at the end of 1999. He served briefly as acting dean, when James Dalen, MD, MPH, dean from 1988 to 2001, suffered a stroke in the late ’90s. Dr. Dalen, with whom Dr. Smith was very close, died Jan. 16, 2024.

For nearly three decades at the UArizona, Dr. Smith enjoyed his role as a professor of medicine, teaching medical students, mentoring interns and residents, and caring for patients. He received 10 teaching awards from medical students and alumni, as well as the American College of Physicians, which gave him an Arizona Distinguished Teacher Award. In addition, he is the namesake for one of the department’s annual honors, the Jay W. Smith, MD, Award for Outstanding Students of Medicine.

“I loved talking with Jay. He was a superb doctor, a beloved and multiply honored teacher, and a 5-star human being,” said Joseph Alpert, MD, former Department of Medicine chair (1992-2006) and current professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology and member of the Sarver Heart Center.

Mindy Fain, MD, current chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine, Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, agreed. “He was just the kindest, brightest and most gentle, wonderful clinician educator,” she said. She’s also co-director of the UArizona Center on Aging.

“I took over his practice when he retired,” said Kevin Moynahan, MD, a professor in Dr. Fain’s division and the college’s vice dean for education, “and I was always impressed by how much his patients cared and respected him. They really loved him.”

The Smiths traveled extensively in retirement, but chose to stay in Tucson. Dr. Smith was an avid fisherman and photographer and loved spending time outdoors with family and friends. Mrs. Smith said, “We had lived here for 30 years and loved the desert. He spent a lot of time with photography, and the desert was a lot of the inspiration for that. Our children were raised here, so this was their home, too.”

In addition to his wife, Dr. Smith is survived by his daughters, Shawn and her partner, Joe, Shannon and her husband, Derek, and their two daughters, Haley and Dylan.

Dr. Smith's obituary can be found here.

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“A loss in the family for UArizona Health Sciences, Colleges of Medicine, Public Health” (Death of Dr. James Dalen) | Posted Jan. 18, 2024