LITTLE ROCK — Dr. S. William Ross enjoyed a challenge, once mixing up a meat tenderizer concoction to stop a schizophrenic patient from ingesting coins, which could have led to copper deficiency and anemia.
“Dad believed that everybody was worth saving and caring for and nobody was too old,” said his daughter, Leslie Patterson. “He loved difficult, perplexing patients. Dad was a total problemsolver ... didn’t matter if it was cancer, a splinter, arthritis [or a] fire on the stove.”
Ross died Monday in his Little Rock home from complications from Parkinson’s disease, his daughter said.
He was 90.
Ross, who grew up in New York City, developed a love for baseball and became the inspiration for a character in his childhood friend Mark Harris’ 1956 baseball novel, Bang the Drum Slowly.
“He loved the Yankees, loved baseball,” Patterson said, adding that her father continued to play in his adult years.
In 1949, Ross moved with his family to Little Rock for his medical residency and made Arkansas his home.
In the late 1950s, Dr. Joe Bates, deputy state health officer, first met Ross, who was a faculty member at what became the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock.
“He became sort of the doctors’ doctor,” Bates said. “When you really had a difficult diagnostics problem, many people would turn to him for help. He was just revered by his contemporaries, patients and colleagues.”
In 1961, Ross co-founded the Little Rock Diagnostic Clinic and went on to have a long career in hematology, oncology and rheumatology. Ross worked with cancer patients at a time when there wasn’t much to offer medically; he helped perform the first bone-marrow transplant in the state in 1959.
“He loved to do complicated mathematical assessments of clinic problems,” Bates said. “He had a good knowledge of electronics. Some people just turn on the switch and know the answer, but he wanted to understand how it worked and whether it was right or not.”
Ross became known not only for his expertise, but for his quiet, kind demeanor.
“Most of the people that worked in the lab were women and his initials are S.W. Ross, and they called him ‘Sweet William,’” Bates said. “He was very careful, never rushed a patient.”
Above all, Ross kept calm, no matter the situation, Patterson said.
“I saw him take an infant nephew of mine who was choking ... pick him up, turn him over and take care of it,” his daughter said. “I’ve just never seen him shaken.”
Ross helped the individual, but also the masses by helping create the Arkansas Chapter of the National Arthritis Foundation, the Southwest Oncology Group and the Arkansas Blood and Cancer Society.
“He was an expert diagnostician,” Bates said. “In his day, there was no one better in Arkansas.”
In 1990, Ross became chief of the Hematology-Oncology Department at the Veterans Administration hospital, a post he held for eight years.
“He was probably the first person to develop a concept of an oncology nurse,” Bates said. “This was a nurse who had advanced skills and worked entirely with cancer patients.”
Until his early 80s, Ross was a consultant for the cancer registry at the Arkansas Department of Health and for his work, the S. William Ross Award was established.
“He made it a very scholarly operation,” Bates said. “He made it a real working document that helps us understand cancer in Arkansas.”
Even in his retirement, Ross continued to study medical journals, attend national medical conferences and keep up with current events.
“He had a close circle of friends, we all enjoyed getting together for dinners,” Bates said. “He was very politically involved. He had strong opinions about national and local politics.”
Though his life revolved around the medical world, Ross never hesitated to stop and smell the roses, usually on one of his 60 rose bushes.
“Dad really tended to things, whether it was people or roses,” his daughter said. “He was very loving.”
Arkansas, Pages 14 on 12/05/2012