Dr. J. Ward Kennedy ’55 died on June 8, 2008, in Seattle, Washington, after a battle with lung cancer.

After graduating from Bowdoin, he earned his medical degree at University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in 1959. He went to the University of Washington for an internship that year and spent nearly his entire professional career there until he retired in 1997.A leader in cardiology, he was director of the University of Washington’s Division of Cardiology and served as president of the American College of Cardiology from 1995 to 1996. He was among the pioneers in the early days of heart catheterizations and ascertaining how heart functions are measured, conducted studies of the effects of cardiac and coronary artery surgery, and performed the first heart catheterization and helped to establish the first cardiac unit in Malaysia. He was part of a U.S. Department of State tour to the Soviet Union to help develop cardiac treatment programs there in the mid- 1970s, and he taught in the Czech Republic in 1996. He played in bands ever since high school, including playing trombone with the physician jazz group, Ain’t No Heaven Seven. He is survived by his wife, Kathryn Davis Kennedy; three children,Will, David, and Celia; three stepchildren, Sarah Holt, Mike Davis, and Ann Davis; a sister, Margaret Kennedy Gogerty; and eight grandchildren.