John Sloan Warner, MD, professor emeritus of Neurology and, along with his late wife Margaret “Peggy” Smith Warner, a devoted supporter of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and Vanderbilt University Medical Center, died May 13. He was 93.
Dr. Warner and the Warner family have provided philanthropic support across a range of areas at the Medical Center, from the Shade Tree Clinic, Vanderbilt’s medical student-run, free clinic, to the Department of Neurology, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, among others.
In 2007, the Margaret and John Warner Chair for Neurological Education was established in their honor. It was first awarded to Robert Macdonald, MD, PhD, past chair of the Department of Neurology.
“John was a force of nature, remaining active and engaged with the department in the best care of patients with headache up until a few weeks before his death,” said Dane Chetkovich, MD, PhD, Margaret and John Warner Professor of Neurological Education and chair of the Department of Neurology. “His wit and humor seemed to be part of every conversation.”
Dr. Warner earned his undergraduate degree from the University of the South in 1952 and graduated from VUSM in 1956, following in the path of his father, Robert Warner, MD, an ophthalmologist who graduated in the class of 1920.
He served an internship in internal medicine at Vanderbilt, followed by an internal medicine residency at the Nashville Veterans Administration Hospital.
Following a fellowship at the University of Minnesota and positions at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia, and at Duke University School of Medicine, he returned to Nashville and joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 1965. He was one of those who worked to found the Department of Neurology as a separate department in 1969.
His specialty was the treatment of headaches, and he founded the Vanderbilt Headache Clinic in 1991 and directed it until 1999.
“He took care of people with intractable headache at a time when we had few if any effective treatments,” Chetkovich said. “His practice was always evidence-based with a good dose of common sense.”
Chetkovich recalled that Dr. Warner’s experience and expertise contributed both to the medical literature on the treatment of headache and also to the training of clinicians and his patients.
“His work at Vanderbilt contributed significantly to the medical literature in the care of people with headache,” he said. “He embodied the physician as a teacher — and loved teaching students, residents and his patients about the care of people with headache.”
Dr. Warner was a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, a leader in many professional groups, including the American Headache Society, the International Headache Society, and founder and first president of the Southern Clinical Neurology Society.
Recently, he attended the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the School of Medicine, proud to be its oldest returning alumnus.
Dr. Warner is preceded in death by his wife of 67 years, Margaret “Peggy” Smith Warner, and he is survived by daughter Jeannette Sloan Warner, son J. Sloan Warner Jr., MD (a 1988 VUSM graduate) (Jane), and daughter Mary Laird Warner, MD (a 1990 VUSM graduate) (Russell Stewart); and grandchildren, Jerome Blakeman Goldstein, Margaret Warner Goldstein, John Sloan Warner III, Colton Day Warner, Russell Orson Stewart Jr. (currently a VUSM student) and Henry Laird Stewart.
Visitation for Dr. Warner will be 10-11 a.m. May 30 at St. George’s Episcopal Church, 4715 Harding Pike, Nashville, with the funeral service to follow at 11 a.m. A private burial will follow.
