William H.M. Finney, a retired neurosurgeon who was known not only for his technical expertise, but for his commitment to public health, died Thursday after an apparent heart attack while driving near his home in Towson. He was 79.
Dr. Finney was an expert on back injuries and performed hundreds of disc operations during his career. He also helped start Shepherd's Clinic, a low-cost treatment center for Baltimore's working poor.
"He was one of the last of the old breed of doctors, who gave their lives completely to the field," said his longtime friend and colleague, Union Memorial Hospital surgeon Dr. William Howard.
Dr. Finney's family had a medical tradition. His grandfather founded Union Memorial Hospital; his father and an uncle were doctors; and his mother was a nurse.
Born and raised in Ruxton, Dr. Finney enrolled at Princeton University in 1942. During his freshman year, he enlisted in the Naval Reserves. He served as a pharmacist's mate on a hospital ship in the Pacific and received a Purple Heart. After being discharged, he returned to Princeton and graduated in 1948. He went on to Johns Hopkins Medical School, finishing in 1953.
After completing a neurosurgical residency at Duke University, he became a neurosurgeon at Union Memorial Hospital. From 1960 to 1985, he was chief of neurosurgery at Union Memorial; from 1970 to 1976, he was the hospital's chief of staff.
"He was probably one of the top two or three best neurosurgeons in Baltimore. And Baltimore was known for having top neurosurgeons, so he was one of the top guys in the world," said Dr. Howard.
He recalled Dr. Finney as a wonderful raconteur, who loved telling stories about his medical experiences.
His friend was "just good with his hands," Dr. Howard said. Dr. Finney enjoyed woodworking - restoring antique furniture, and carving small puzzles and other decorative pieces.
According to his son Daniel Finney of Towson, Dr. Finney liked to whittle three-foot-long chains from a single piece of wood. When he moved to Blakehurst, a Towson retirement community, he set up a communal woodworking shop and often repaired other residents' furniture. Dr. Finney also loved the outdoors, especially fishing, duck hunting, gardening, and bicycling.
In 1949, Dr. Finney married the former June Howard Eager of Towson. The Eagers and the Finneys were friends, and the two had known each other since they were children. But it wasn't until one summer, when both families were vacationing in Chester, Nova Scotia, that the two teen-agers decided that "we might stick together," as June Finney put it. They had four children.
In the 1960s, the Finneys became friends with famed jazz musician Benny Goodman. They met on the Caribbean island of St. Maarten, where both had vacation houses. Dr. Finney liked big-band music, and both men were direct and unpretentious, Daniel Finney remembered. Whenever Mr. Goodman played in the Baltimore area, the two friends would get together, with Mr. Goodman often staying at the Finneys' house.
When he retired as a neurosurgeon in 1990, Dr. Finney didn't slow down. That same year, he earned a master's degree in public health from the Johns Hopkins University, finishing in one year - half the usual time. "He just liked medicine, and he wanted to keep doing it," Dr. Howard said.
As he had done before he retired, he continued to go to Guyana as part of a Catholic Relief Services surgical mission. In the late 1980s, he also co-founded and led a group that fought to reform the state's malpractice liability laws.
His largest project, though, was Shepherd's Clinic, which began in 1990 in the basement of a rowhouse at North Avenue and Charles Street, and then moved to a nearby bank. For several years, Dr. Finney served without pay as medical director; after stepping down, he continued to see patients there once a week. He also regularly visited the offices of other doctors, collecting free drug samples to bring to the clinic.
"He looked like an old Santa Claus walking around with his bag of samples," Dr. Howard recalled; on the day he died, Dr. Finney had brought one of those bags to the clinic.
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Wednesday at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, 5603 N. Charles St.
In addition to his wife and son, he is survived by two other sons, Mac Finney of Parkton and Angus Finney of White Hall; daughter Lee Finney Bleser of Stoneleigh; a sister, Virginia Finney Rose, of Rocky Mount, N.C.; two brothers, John M.T. Finney III of Baltimore and Alexander Miller Finney, of Chester, Nova Scotia; and eight grandchildren.
