WALTER BROWN QUISENBERRY / 1912-2002

Medical author
and former state
director of health dies

Editor 'Jack' Burby
More obituaries

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By Leila Fujimori
lfujimori@starbulletin.com

Former state Health Director Walter Brown Quisenberry, author of health publications and advocate of the use of Pap smears, died Saturday. He was 90.

"He brought the Pap smear to Hawaii," said wife Evalynn Morgan Quisenberry.

When Walter Quisenberry came to Hawaii in 1947, he worked as a clinic physician for the state Health Department treating venereal disease patients and offered free Pap smears to indigent women.

"He found, in one year's time, nine cases of women with cancer of the cervix who would have died," she said.

He also educated doctors on the importance of the test and set up a small laboratory on Punchbowl Street for reading Pap smears, which are used to detect cervical cancer. That led to writing a published paper on "Cancer Control in the Community," which he presented in Moscow, Australia, Japan and New Zealand.

Quisenberry authored more than 56 publications on cancer, drug addiction and venereal disease.

Born June 12, 1912, in Purman, Mo., Quisenberry was moved to practice medicine after a country doctor, traveling 11 miles on horseback, treated him for diphtheria at the age of 4, Evalynn Quisenberry said.

Quisenberry attended UCLA and Woodmont College and got his medical degree at Loma Linda University in 1940.

In 1941 he entered into private practice. Quisenberry then served with the U.S. Public Health Service from 1942-46. He obtained his master's degree in public health at Johns Hopkins University in 1945.

Evalynn Quisenberry met Quisenberry when she was a 17-year-old appendicitis patient on the operating table at Santa Monica Medical Center. The young doctor stitched her up, and later a nurse introduced the two.

At the same hospital, Quisenberry treated movie stars, including Lana Turner and Henry Fonda, but did not know who they were.

"'Lana Turner -- everybody makes a big fuss over her, who is she?' He was so religious, he never went to the movies," she said.

The two were married two years later.

Quisenberry aspired to be a medical missionary in Bolivia but had to wait two years. In the meantime he was offered several jobs but chose one in Hawaii.

"He said, 'I saw the hula girls at the UCLA games. Let's go to Hawaii,'" Evalynn Quisenberry said.

President Harry Truman awarded him three medals from 1944-46 for his work in Selective Service -- examining young men who wanted to join the military during the war, his wife said.

He returned to private practice after the war.

Quisenberry served as health director from 1966 to 1974.

He is also survived by son Terry, daughters Linda Q. Green and Ann Jane Zahradnik, sister Marie Ray and six grandchildren.

Services will be held at a later date. Donations suggested to American Cancer Society of Hawaii.