Dr. Thorne S. Winter III

Dr. Thorne Sherwood Winter, III, age 93, passed away on June 14, 2026, in Atlanta, Georgia. Thorne was born on December 7, 1932 in Greenville, South Carolina, the son of Thorne S. Winter, Jr. and Blanche Attaway Winter. He moved to Atlanta, Georgia in 1939, where he resided until his death. Thorne attended E. Rivers Grammar School and North Fulton High School in Buckhead, where he was a member of the National Honor Society and a four-year participant in varsity football and track. He was a member of Boy Scout Troop Number One Peachtree Heights (the name was later changed to Troop 122), where he became an Eagle Scout and a member of the Order of the Arrow. He was also a member of Theta Kappa Omega social fraternity.

Thorne attended Duke University where he was elected to membership in several groups including Phi Beta Kappa and Beta Omega Sigma scholarship societies and Omicron Delta Kappa leadership society. He was also a member of the Alpha Tau Omega social fraternity. In June 1952, during the middle of the Korean War, he was a midshipman on a U.S. Navy training cruise aboard the battleship USS Wisconsin to Scotland, France, and Cuba. The next summer, he worked as an Industrial X-ray technician at Lockheed Corp. building the first C-130 military cargo aircraft.

In 1958, Thorne graduated Cum Laude from Harvard Medical School where he was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha honorary medical society. Post-medical school training included an Internship and Residency in Internal Medicine at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts (now known as Mass General Brigham), and a Fellowship in Cardiology at Grady Memorial Hospital (Emory University). He had two years of military service in the U.S. Public Health Service as a Clinical Associate at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. He was part of a team doing research on Acute Leukemia under the leadership of Dr. Emil J. Freireich (considered a pioneer in modern clinical cancer research). Dr. Winter gave the first two human doses of the chemotherapy drug Vincristine (Oncovin), discovered a second substrate (Hydroxyurea) for the enzyme urease, and discovered a mechanism of resistance of leukemia cells to the drug 6-Mercaptopurine.

From 1964 until 2004, Dr. Winter was in the private practice of Internal Medicine and Cardiology treating patients both in his office and in the hospital. From 2005 until September 2016, he was part of the Internal Medicine Department of the Multiple Sclerosis Center of Atlanta. Dr. Winter was adored by all his patients. He considered himself an old-style practitioner of internal medicine who was patient- centered. He always started his visits by asking his patients how they were doing. He believed taking detailed histories was paramount for good patient care. He was on the Active Staff of Northside, Piedmont, and St. Joseph’s Hospitals. In his early years of practice, he was also the Assistant Director of Medical Education at Piedmont Hospital where he gave the first Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Course (CPR) in Atlanta to the entire Nursing Staff (1967) and helped establish the first coronary care unit. In 1970, he admitted the first patient to Northside Hospital.

Dr. Winter was Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Cardiology and Board Qualified in Oncology. He was a Fellow of the American College of Physicians (Internal Medicine) and the American College of Cardiology. He was a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Federation for Medical Research, the Atlanta Clinical Society, the American Society of Hematology, the Rocky Mountain Traumatological Society (Past President, 1996), the American Osler Society, and the Medical Association of Atlanta. He was a Senior Medical Examiner for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and a consultant for the Divers Alert Network (DAN).

During his third week at Harvard, Thorne met Eleanor Constance (Connie) Blunt at a Wellesley College social mixer. On August 2, 1957, they married in Connie’s hometown of Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts. Connie and Thorne had a long and happy life together participating in various outdoor activities, such as snow skiing, canoeing, camping, and scuba diving. They also had strong ecological interests. They participated in the Sea Turtle Project on Little Cumberland Island and slept on all of the Georgia Barrier Islands. They were interested in a portion of the Costa Rica Rain Forest used for environmental research and education. As a lifelong adventurer, Thorne summited Mount Rainier. In addition, he went on an Explorers Club Flag Expedition to Butaritari (a former Gilbert Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean) which ultimately led to the finding of the bodies of nineteen missing Marines from World War II. Thorne was instrumental in identifying a discovered leg bone as being too long to match the population it had originally been attributed to. This note appeared in a report, leading the Marines to believe the bone was from an American and prompting a search for the missing Marines. The Marines were members of Evan Carlson’s Marine Raider Battalion, and Thorne was proud to attend their burial in Arlington National Cemetery on August 17, 2001.

Thorne was a long-time member of The Buckhead Boys and was inducted as an Honoree in 1993. He was active in, and a Past President of, the Burns Club of Atlanta, which is Atlanta’s oldest cultural association. Thorne’s grandmother was from Scotland, and he and Connie enjoyed going to the annual Stone Mountain Games with Clan MacLachlan. Membership in other non-medical organizations included the Capital City Club, the Explorers Club, Mensa, the Saint Andrews Society, the Old Guard, the Society of the Antiquaries of Scotland (Fellow), the Atlanta and Cobb County Civil War Round Tables, the Atlanta WWII Round Table, the Sons of the American Revolution, and the Sons of the Confederate Veterans. He was a member of Peachtree Presbyterian Church.

Dr. Winter was preceded in death by his wife Connie, his daughter Meredith Winter Mabry and son-in-law Philip Mabry, and grandson Andrew Mabry. He is survived by two children, Allison Winter Wheeler (Kenneth) of Madison, Alabama and Thorne S. Winter IV (Sandra) of Atlanta; six grandchildren, Melissa Mabry Cline (Daniel) of Greenville, South Carolina, Travis Wheeler (Meredith) of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Cody Wheeler (Parker) of Atlanta, Thorne S. Winter V (Rebekah) of Atlanta, Kiernan Winter (Melanie) of Denver, Colorado, and Marin Winter (Robert) of Savannah, Georgia; and two great-grandsons Andrew and John Cline of Greenville, South Carolina.

A visitation with family will be held on Monday, July 13 from 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM at the H.M. Patterson & Son - Arlington Chapel at 173 Allen Road in Sandy Springs. A Memorial service will be held on Tuesday, July 14, 11:00 AM at Peachtree Presbyterian Church, 3434 Roswell Road NW in Buckhead. A reception will follow at Peachtree Presbyterian Church.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be directed to the Burns Club of Atlanta Building and Maintenance Fund (988 Alloway Place, Atlanta, GA 30316) or a charity of your choice.