Patricia Joan Blair

An alumna of the University Of Missouri School Of Medicine, she returned to Columbia in 1994 and made it her home. Having founded ACTS International in 1992 while living in California, she quickly gained community support, recruiting scores of mid-Missouri residents to volunteer for projects benefiting children and families in the country of Georgia. They included the sister-city relationship established in 1996 between Columbia and 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.

A number of projects involved MU faculty members from medicine and other divisions, as well as Lions and Rotary club members in Missouri and around the world. Her vision for ACTS was “people helping people build a free and peaceful world.”

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. Working with MU neonatalogist John Pardalos, M.D., she was continuing a partnership with Rotary begun in 2014 to train and equip physicians, nurses and midwives in Georgia's poorest region to resuscitate and stabilize at-risk newborns. She also was overseeing a shipment of dried soup mix from Breedlove Foods in Texas 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.

She was born June 19, 1945, in Kearns, Utah, to 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 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.

After starting her career practicing emergency medicine in Springdale, Ark., 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. The trauma management program she developed as a research project was so successful that it was mainstreamed into Kaiser Permanente/Stanford University's operations.

She received many honors during her career, both in the United States and in Georgia, the most recent being the Boone County 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, Ark.; 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 4:00 p.m. February 9, 2019 at First Baptist Church in Columbia with a reception to follow. 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 to ACTS via the CoMoGives campaign through Dec. 31: comogives.com/product/a-call-to-serve-acts.