Dr. James Robert McKinney

Service: 2 p.m. Sunday, Sparkman Funeral Home, 1029 S. Greenville Ave., Dallas, TX. Interment will be at 9 a.m. Monday, DFW National Cemetery.

Dr. McKinney was born May 13, 1925 in Youngstown, OH to Gordon and Amy McKinney. He enlisted in the Army Air Corp. upon high school completion in 1943. He served as a B-17 bomber navigator in Europe. The plane was shot down, so he spent the last months of World War II in a German POW camp. After the war’s end, he earned a B.S. in chemistry within two years from Case Western Reserve, Cleveland, OH. He completed his M.D. in 1951 at Ohio State University, then reentered the armed services for his internship and residency in anesthesiology. His last assignments were in Texas, including Sheppard AFB hospital. In 1955, he began practice as the first M.D. anesthesiologist in Wichita Falls, became board certified in anesthesiology in 1958, established the first recovery room at Wichita Falls General Hospital, and formed the Wichita Falls Anesthesia Group, where he practiced principally with Victor Saied, M.D., for nearly thirty years. In 1969, he and Victor founded the Wichita General Hospital School of Anesthesia, training nurse anesthetists as the school’s medical director. During his years at the hospital, in addition to serving as Chief of the hospital’s Department of Anesthesiology, he established a dialysis service in Intensive Care after seeking training in Oklahoma City. He also served as director of Respiratory Therapy at the Wichita General as well, obtaining training from Corning Lab in order to establish the hospital’s Arterial Blood Gas service.

He had a wide range of medical interests, and even visited China in the late 1970’s to observe acupuncture methods and back in the U.S., used acupuncture for pain management. In the 1950’s, he and a Wichita Falls veterinarian, Dan Roberts, worked with anesthesia techniques involving horses. After establishing his CRNA school, for 8 years, he made 14 trips to Mexico, using his graduating CRNAs to provide anesthesia for Proyecto Huasteca-Sonrisa Alegra, a charity run originally by Fort Worth plastic surgeon Valentin Gracia, M.D., that provides hair lip and cleft palette repair in Mexico, to support that charity endeavor and give his students the challenge of providing quality anesthesia in primitive settings with limited equipment.

He and his wife Alma and their family also ranched in the Wichita Falls area for nearly 20 years, raising Appaloosas, quarter horses and Angus cattle, and he took up snow skiing in his 40’s. After his retirement to Richardson, his main hobby was genealogy. He was sought out by others as a research authority, becoming an avid user of computers and the internet.

He is survived by his wife of nearly 65 years, Alma Frame McKinney, and his sisters Ann and Nancy. He and Alma have four surviving children: James M. McKinney, who has three daughters: Sarah Elder, (mother of two great-grandchildren, Helen and Sebastian) and her husband John, Claire and Amelia McKinney; his son D. Scott McKinney, his daughter Colleen Guarraia and her husband Tom, his daughter Andrea Moore and her husband George H. Moore, M.D., and their sons, Alan and Evan Moore.