Patricia J. "Trish" Blair

Patricia J. "Trish" Blair, M.D., 73, founding president of A Call To Serve (ACTS) International, died Nov. 18, 2018, in Columbia, Mo., where she had resided since 1994. Dr. Blair began her career as an emergency medicine physician in Springdale, Ark. Her father was born in Marshall, Ark., and spent much of his life in Fayetteville, where Dr. Blair's half-brother, James B. Blair, resides. Dr. Blair was born June 19, 1945, in Kearns, Utah, to the late William Joe and Margaret Patterson Blair. Her father's military service took the family to Magna, Utah; Merced, Calif., Cheyenne, Wyo.; Colorado Springs, Colo.; Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.; and finally Rolla, Mo. A graduate of Rolla High School, she received a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1969 and a master of science in 1971, both from the University of Missouri-Rolla. After earning her medical degree from MU in 1975, she interned in general surgery at New York University School of Medicine, and then completed a research fellowship in colon and rectal surgery at the Cleveland Clinic and a surgical trauma residency at the University of Louisville. Dr. Blair joined the faculty of the Stanford University School of Medicine in 1985. She chaired the emergency medicine department at Santa Teresa Kaiser Hospital in San Jose, Calif., and was a physician partner of the Permanente Medical Group there. In the late 1980s, she visited Georgia and other Soviet republics as part of a medical delegation responding to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and Armenian earthquake. Over the next few years, she made return trips to several of those countries to provide medical support, but one place, and its people, stole her heart – Georgia. In 1989 she helped Georgian colleagues establish the Georgian Medical Association, the first physician organization of its kind in the Soviet Union. In 1991, as the Soviet Union was dissolving, she received an urgent fax from Georgian Medical Association physicians saying the Russians had pulled out, stripping their hospitals bare of equipment and supplies. The physicians feared their patients would die and asked if she could help. Gaining support from the California Air National Guard and other groups, she organized more than 50 airlifts to meet those urgent needs. In 1992, she founded ACTS International in Mountain View, Calif., as the first American non-governmental organization working in the country of Georgia. She took a leave of absence from her job and spent the next years on the ground in Georgia, organizing programs and structure to receive and deliver aid and developing partnerships. ACTS Georgia, the organization's in-country chapter, was established as Georgia's first nonprofit humanitarian aid organization, with a goal of institutional capacity building and enabling Georgians to help Georgians. Returning from Georgia, Dr. Blair relocated to Columbia, Mo., where family members lived and where she had attended medical school at the University of Missouri. She quickly gained community support, recruiting scores of volunteers for projects benefiting Georgian children and families. They included a sister-city relationship between Columbia and Georgia's second-largest city of Kutaisi, humanitarian aid shipments, multiple professional exchanges and three iodized salt drives in the early 2000s to address goiter and developmental problems related to iodine deficiency in Georgian children. Her vision for ACTS was "people helping people build a free and peaceful world." She led the establishment of the first Lions and Rotary clubs in Georgia. Diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer more than two years ago, Dr. Blair had remained actively involved in the nonprofit throughout her illness and chemotherapy treatments, planning for furnishing and equipping the ACTS-Lions Ronald James Georgian Diabetic Children's Camp's new permanent facilities in Dmanisi, and continuing a partnership with Rotary begun in 2014 to train and equip medical professionals in Georgia's poorest region to resuscitate and stabilize at-risk newborns. She also was overseeing a shipment of dried soup mix to its final destination in Tbilisi, Georgia, where it will help supply elderly residents with 10,000 meals a day for a year at 11 local soup kitchens. Dr. Blair received many honors during her career, both in the United States and in Georgia, the most recent being the Boone County (Mo.) Medical Society's Distinguished Physician of the Year Award in 2017. She previously received the White House Millennium Service to the Community Award, the Lions Clubs International Presidential Medal of Honor and Rotary International's highest honor, the "Service Above Self" Award. Dr. Blair was a member of First Baptist Church of Columbia. She is survived by a sister, Jeanette G. Blair of Columbia; a half-brother, James B. Blair and his wife, Nancy, of Fayetteville; a half-sister, Margaret A. Marsh and her husband, Patrick, of Oceanside, Calif.; a nephew she helped raise, Gregory J. Blair, M.D., and his wife, Kathryn, of Portland, Ore.; and five other nieces and nephews. A memorial service will take place at 4 p.m. Feb. 9, 2019, at First Baptist Church in Columbia. Memorials are requested in lieu of flowers and may be mailed to ACTS International, c/o Kathleene James, 2818 Melody Lane, Columbia, Mo., 65203, or given online by clicking the blue "Donate" button at http://facebook.com/ACTS.International. Online condolences may be made at www.memorialfuneralhomeandcemetery.com.