Surgeon Was a Pioneer

Walter Richard Peterson, Sr., also known as "Doc", "Pete", and "W.R.", is featured on the obituary page in the "Remembrances" section. He died on December 20, 2006, and was 92 years old. "In a medical career spanning more than four decades, Peterson pioneered and saw changes to local health delivery that were hardly imaginable back when he interned in the early 1940s at General Hospital No. 2--the city's facility for blacks and Hispanics. After serving two years in the Army Medical Corps during World War II, he finished his residency and helped launch the Doctors Clinic at 25th Street and Brooklyn Avenue. It was credited as being among the first--if not the first--multispecialty, African-American group practices in the nation. Peterson, a surgeon, served as president and director of the clinic from 1949 to 1980. His partners included the late Samuel U. Rodgers, one of the country's first black physicians allowed to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology." Dr. Peterson spent his later years as a regional medical adviser for the Social Security Administration. Includes his picture.