John R. McNicholas M.D.

McNICHOLAS, John R., M.D. (1916-2005) Dr. John R. McNicholas, a physician who delivered babies and cared for women in the area for nearly a half-century, died Oct. 18 in his Glendale home after treatment for lung cancer. He was 89.
Dr. McNicholas was born Jan. 24, 1916, to immigrant parents. He was raised with two brothers and a sister in Marenisco, on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. He graduated with a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University, where he was a member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity, and earned a medical degree from the University of Michigan, where he was a member of Phi Chi. He worked while attending school, and sent money home to help pay for his siblings' education. While selling newspapers, he saw a sorority girl and noted the pin she wore; he called the sorority house, tracked her down and married Ann Herzog in June 1943. He was commissioned as a captain in the U.S. Army, and served as a medical officer in the 321st Engineering Battalion of the 96th Infantry Division. He landed on Leyte and Okinawa and earned a Bronze Star for those campaigns, but the only war stories he ever told were about fighting the mud. He also recalled that after Japan's surrender, he and the captain of the tank-landing ship he was aboard were the only two who showed up regularly for meals during a typhoon. During the war, his brother James served on Gen. George Patton's staff in Europe, and his brother Carleton was killed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. He returned from the Pacific and headed from Ann Arbor, Mich., with his wife and two daughters to Oregon, where he had trained in the Army. The family soon left and moved to Glendale in 1949, where Dr. McNicholas began practicing obstetrics and gynecology. He and his wife added two boys to the family, and he eventually joined Drs. Hildegard Wilkinson and Willard Crosley as a partner. After they retired, he partnered with Gail Vanderlee, Kathleen Forte and Laila Al Marayati. He was a member of the L.A. County Medical Association, the L.A. Ob-Gyn Society and a longtime staff member of Glendale Memorial Hospital. He served the hospital in several committee and administrative posts, including stints as chief of staff and chairman of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department. He also worked as a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at University of Southern California's School of Medicine, and thoroughly enjoyed teaching surgery and diagnostics to resident physicians and medical students at L.A. County/USC Medical Center. He taught there until 2004. Dr. Forte, his partner since 1981, said that after he retired in 1993 at age 77, he kept in close touch with the medical community, and regularly stopped by the office to keep up on friends and patients and share news and gossip. Many of his patients sought him out for company and counsel decades after he had treated them, Dr. Forte said. "He was an outstanding doctor because he was empathetic, and truly cared for his patients," she said. "He had a global concern for them, not just as patients but for their marital problems, or their concerns about their children - about their whole lives. He was considerate, empathetic - a wonderful doctor." - continued in next column