Dr. William F. “Bill” Fritz, a retired physician and World War II veteran, died in his sleep at his Riderwood home on June 11. He was 98 years old.
“In the medical community, one of the highest tributes one can pay is to be known as a physician’s physician. Bill Fritz was not only a physician’s physician, he was a friend of friends,” said Dr. William A. Crowley, assistant professor emeritus at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
“He cared so much about each and every one of his patients and was in constant contact with them,” he said. “He would see them in their homes or call them to check in on how they were doing.”
Sheila Riggs was a longtime patient and friend.
“I can only say that his patients adored him not only because of his brilliant intellect and first-rate medical expertise, but also because of qualities he carried with him throughout his life,” Riggs said in an email.
“He was a man of extraordinary empathy and genuinely interested in the lives of his patients and friends,” she wrote. “To say he was a kind-hearted man seems an understatement. Those who knew him would say he was the most kind-hearted doctor, father and friend they’d ever known.”
William Frederick Fritz, the son of Frederick D. Fritz, an industrial leather belt distributor, and Esther Brankow Fritz, a homemaker, was born in Merrill, Wisconsin, and raised in Oshkosh.
After graduating from school in Oshkosh, he was offered an invitation to attend the Naval Academy by Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, but he declined, preferring to pursue a pre-medical career in the Navy during World War II, and instead studied at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
After completing the program, he was assigned to the Old Philadelphia Naval Hospital as a corpsman and was discharged in 1945 with the rank of second lieutenant.
Dr. Fritz began his medical studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1945 and graduated in 1949.
While attending Hopkins, his roommate’s aunt invited Dr. Fritz and several classmates to a fox hunt followed by dinner.
When the hunt was over, he saw Susan Baker, a Vassar College sophomore, dismount from his horse, he visited her at the school, and the two subsequently fell in love and were married in 1950.
He completed his internship and residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and then was called up to serve in the U.S. Public Health Service during the Korean War.
Dr. Fritz was assigned as senior assistant surgeon to the National Heart Institute of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, where he was part of a team of physicians who worked closely with Dr. Luther Terry, who, as Surgeon General in 1964, warned about the health hazards of tobacco.
After two years at the NIH studying morbid obesity, heart disease, and irreversible shock, he became a pharmacology fellow at Hopkins.
He returned to Hopkins for a residency and then began practicing medicine in 1955 at a clinic on West University Parkway, where he practiced until his retirement in 1991.
“I would watch him make his rounds every morning seeing patients,” Dr. Crowley said. “He had such deep compassion for the patients he was looking after. I’d never seen anything like it.”
“It was a wonderful life,” said Truman T. Seamans, a partner at Brown Investment Advisory and his best friend for 70 years.
“Bill was an extraordinary human being. He was a great doctor and, more importantly, a great physician. He cared about the whole patient,” Semans said.
In the 1960s, Dr. Fritz inherited a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud automobile from a patient, a joyous occasion for her as she was “a true car enthusiast,” according to her daughter, Ann Fritz Hackett of McLean, Virginia.
Bradford Jakebos, editorial editor of the Evening Sun, wrote about this in an editorial called “A doctor’s dilemma.”
After Mr Jacobs realised that Dr Fritz’s wife and children were embarrassed to be seen in his Rolls, and Dr Fritz realised that patients might suffer serious relapses if they saw him arrive on a house call, he sold the car.
During Hopkins Medicine’s 100th anniversary, Dr. Fritz was one of the recipients of the Outstanding Physician Award.
He was a member of the American College of Physicians and a board certified physician, or specialist, with the American Board of Internal Medicine.
He was on the staff of Hopkins and GBMC, as well as practicing at MedStar Union Memorial Hospital and the former Church Hospital and Home.
He served on several boards including GBMC and both the GBMC and MedStar Union Memorial Hospital Foundation Boards.
Dr. Fritz and his wife lived in Luxton for many years but in 1960 moved to Bryn Arden in Green Spring Valley where they raised their three children.
They returned to Luxton in 1983 and in recent years Dr. Fritz lived at Riderwood Station in Riderwood.
After retiring, he took up oil painting and wrote and published a mystery novel, “Thy Will Be Done,” at the age of 84. He used to do three crossword puzzles a day, until macular degeneration forced him to stop, and he was able to do them once a week with his granddaughter over Zoom.
He and his wife, who died in 2009, enjoyed tennis and golf, playing on courses around the world, including in Ireland and Portugal.
They spent summers at their home, Still Pond, in Jaffrey Center, New Hampshire, and winters at the Jupiter Island Club in Hobe Sound, Florida.
A sociable person, Dr. Fritz had a deep interest in current affairs and was a gifted and lively conversationalist.
In recent years, he has suffered from macular degeneration, but he refused to let his condition get in the way of social occasions.
“Bill was very proud of his loving family and had many dear friends from New England to Florida and across the country,” said Dr. Earl Gallagher, a retired Baltimore physician and friend of 70 years.
“My father had a lot of physical challenges in the last years of his life, but he managed it all,” he said. “I spoke to him every night for 40 years.”
Dr. Fritz was a longtime member of Our Savior’s Episcopal Church, 5603 N. Charles St., and a memorial service will be held at the church on July 19 at 3 p.m.
Besides his daughter, he is survived by a son, William F. B. Fritz of Annapolis, a daughter, Ellen Fritz Clattenburg of Wethersfield, Vt., eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
