Paul WIESNER

1940 - 2019

WIESNER, Paul Joseph Born on October 25, 1940, Paul Joseph Wiesner was the fourth of seven sons in a lively, athletic and civic-spirited family in Neenah Wisconsin. Paul entered the Catholic Maryknoll Seminary after his sophomore year in high school, but left after several years to major in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, where he went on to get his medical degree. He did his internship and residency in internal medicine at the University of Rochester and became a fellow in infectious disease at the University of Washington. In 1972 he entered the US Public Health Service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he became Director of the Division of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, where he was, in the words of his colleagues, "the consummate public health leader and mentor," who "worked selflessly for the good of the people he served." There he was able to marshal an effective AIDS taskforce on one of the worst epidemics in modern medicine, thus becoming in former CDC Director William Foege's words, "a hero of the AIDS crisis." In 1989 Dr. Wiesner followed his desire to be involved in public health on the local level by becoming Head of the DeKalb Board of Health, where he served for fifteen years, retiring in 2004. From that vantage point he was able to put into action community programs that underscored his heartfelt belief that the mission of public health is prevention of disease and support of initiatives that encourage people to be healthy. He retired in 2004 and moved to Seattle. His life in Atlanta was actively involved in coaching various of his children's YMCA soccer and basketball teams, volunteering in their schools, and in remodeling projects around his house. He considered himself an excellent instinctual cook, with one legendary recipe featuring porkchops, canned peaches and Coca Cola. He was active in Central Presbyterian Church, and volunteered at their foot clinic, washing and tending the feet of homeless people. He loved his pottery classes at Callanwolde. His artistic creations included elaborate doodles, pen drawings that his friends and family admired and collected. He is survived by his wife of over forty years, Nancy, by his children sons Andrew (Elena) and Matthew (Yuko), and stepdaugther Samantha Marr. Their children, Max and Emma Bury, Sean Wiesner, and Ciara and Yuuki Okabe-Wiesner also survive him.