ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 28, 1996 TAG: 9612300043
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
SOURCE: The New York Times
Dr. William B. Walsh, who founded and led Project HOPE, a nonprofit program that provides medical training, health education and humanitarian assistance around the world, died Friday at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 76 and also lived in Tucson, Ariz.
The cause was prostate cancer, said Laura Petrosian, a spokeswoman for the organization.
Since it was founded in 1958, Project HOPE - Health Opportunities for People Everywhere - has worked in more than 70 countries.
In 1958, as a young cardiologist, he was called in as a consultant after President Dwight Eisenhower suffered a heart attack. Eisenhower took a liking to Walsh and asked him to become co-chairman of the Committee on Medicine and the Health Professions of his People-to-People program, intended to assist developing nations.
Soon Walsh proposed what became the first peacetime hospital ship, the Hope. He led a successful effort to raise $750,000 to refit a mothballed 15,000-ton hospital ship loaned to the project by the Navy. In two years, it was turned into a fully equipped white ship with ``HOPE'' in 15-foot-high block letters on its sides.
He was chief executive officer and medical director of Project HOPE's parent organization, the People-to-People Health Foundation, from 1958 to 1992 and president from 1958 to 1991. He was subsequently vice chairman.
The organization now spends more than $110 million a year, most of which is donated by corporations and individuals.
Walsh received dozens of awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Americas Award, the Theodore Roosevelt Distinguished Service Medal and the National Order of Merit from France.
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