Richard Blount Shepard

Richard Blount Shepard, MD died on February 5, 2022 from complications of COVID after living with several chronic health issues over many years. He was 95 years old. Richard, also known as Dick, was born on May 9, 1926 on Mother’s Day in the Central Park neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama. He grew up in Central Park during the Depression with his parents Francis and Jesse and sisters Sarah and Bess. He attended Phillips High School in Birmingham where he ran track and played the cello, graduating in 1943 at age 17 after skipping a grade. He briefly attended college at the University of Alabama and then joined the army while still 17, completing training as a specialist in rifleman infantry and mechanical engineering. While in the army, he attended college at Birmingham Southern College and North Carolina State. In 1945, he was assigned to the Manhattan Project SED (Special Engineer Detachment) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee where he calibrated and maintained mass spectrometers measuring toxic radioactive substances. In 1946, he was sent to Bikini Atoll in the Pacific where he was part of the Radiological Safety Section during testing of the atomic bomb (Operation Crossroads, Joint Task Force 1). Years later, as a result of this exposure, he developed bladder cancer.

After discharge from the army at the end of 1946, Richard worked as an engineer for the Victoreen Instrument Company and finished college on the GI bill, receiving a degree in physics from Penn State University in 1949. He then attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania where he met Winyss Renee Acton, a graduate student in history. Richard and Winyss married in 1955 and lived in Philadelphia, where their first daughter Elizabeth was born. After completing a rigorous residency in Surgery, Richard further served as a surgical chief resident in New Jersey before moving his family to Alabama in 1960. There he joined the Department of Surgery at the University of Alabama in Birmingham under Dr. Champ Lyons and specialized in Cardiothoracic Surgery. In 1966, he published a sentinel paper on energy equivalent pressure in the Archives of Surgery. He additionally worked for many years with Dr. John Kirklin in the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, where he developed a specialty in electrophysiology of the heart, conducting research with the heart lung machine and helping to develop some of the earliest pacemakers and defibrillators. He also pioneered working with computers in medicine and developed one of the first remote EKG monitoring systems using a device that connected to home telephones. Two more children, Keck and Karen, joined the family in Birmingham. Richard worked many hours every day, but found time to fit in several hobbies including ham radio, sailing, running, aerospace science and flying. He also loved taking his family on vacations to the beach and the mountains. He served many patients over the years and also did outside projects including chairing a committee for NASA to select scientific experiments for the space shuttle. He retired from active practice at UAB in 1996, but continued to do laboratory research and contribute to textbooks on cardiac pacing as an Emeritus Professor of Surgery. He also practiced lifelong learning, taking a course in molecular biology at Smith College in 1998.

Richard attended the Episcopal Church of the Advent in childhood and again during the latter half of his life. He was proceeded in death by his parents Francis Minor Shepard and Jesse Bouchelle Shepard, sisters Sarah Shepard Rice Howard and Bess Shepard Ager, daughter Kathryn Bouchelle Shepard, who died in infancy, and wife Winyss Acton Shepard, who died in 2012, to whom he was married for 57 years. He is survived by his daughter Winyss Elizabeth “Bethy” Shepard, son Richard Kesniel “Keck” Shepard (Christina), daughter Karen Acton Shepard, four grandchildren, Henry, Matthew, Bryson and Sadie, as well as three sisters-in-law and many nieces, nephews and cousins. He will be greatly missed. A memorial service will be held at a later date. Memorial donations may be sent to the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, the UAB Heersink School of Medicine or the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham.