George Francis Dietz

Oak Park - Dr. George Francis Dietz, 93, died Friday, May 3, 2024 in his Oak Park home of natural causes.

The Catholic faith was central to his life. Even while on vacation he would attend Mass every day. His Catholic faith and medical training formed his deep conviction that life was sacred and led him to dedicate many years of his career to delivering babies at home as part of a growing movement supporting natural birth and reducing medical interventions in healthcare. The Pro-Life movement was a hands-on activity for him that found him not only attending pro-life rallies, fund-raisers, and prayer vigils but also giving his time pro-bono as long-time medical director of the South Side Pregnancy Center a charitable organization that aids pregnant women. He was a member of the Catholic Medical Association and a supporter of La Leche League. More than once he intervened to rescue the babies of mothers who changed their minds after starting the abortion process.

Born in Detroit on April 9th, 1931, the eldest of six siblings, he grew up a few blocks from Blessed Sacrament Cathedral where he went to grade school and served as an altar boy. After graduating from Catholic Central High School in Detroit, he attended the University of Detroit and proceeded to earn an M.D. from Loyola University Medical School in Chicago.

As a youth, George enjoyed sports and became famous in the neighborhood for winning an exhibition boxing match as a seventh-grade underdog in his high-school gym. He played football and baseball in school and continued playing sports into adulthood. He loved attending live sporting events, teaching sports to his kids and seeing his children and grandchildren participate in sporting activities as well.

While attending medical school in Chicago he was often invited to gatherings at the home of his professor, Dr. Herbert Ratner, where he met the young Helen Ratner, who would later become his wife. After graduating from medical school he went to work in South Dakota at an Indian Reservation on a government assignment during the Korean War. He later fondly remembered playing catcher for the reservation baseball team where his father visited him and witnessed him catch pop-up foul balls just the way his father had taught him.

At that time there was not yet such a thing as a Family Practice specialization. His medical school mentor therefore advised him to take three residencies to prepare for general practice, namely: Surgery, Obstetrics, and Psychiatry. Prepared by this training he later took a job at Cook County Hospital to help establish one of the first residencies in Family Practice.

Dr. Dietz spent two years in Europe where he learned Spanish, which made possible years of work serving Spanish-speaking patients, including the workers on the backstretch at Hawthorne and Arlington horse racing tracks. He was fond of watching the Kentucky Derby and on the day of his death, it brought a great smile to his face when a visiting friend said he would place a bet for him.

Towards the end of Dr. Dietz's career, he established a private practice to care for an under-served population on the South Side of Chicago, where he continued to make house calls to bed-bound patients until he was 89 years old.

Every year he took his boys and later his grandchildren on a May Pilgrimage that involved camping, hiking and praying the rosary on the way to a shrine to Mary. Always teaching his children, his subjects included the catechism, sports and especially the workbooks on logic that he later read to his grandchildren, great-nephews and great-nieces.

Fond family memories of Dr. Dietz include his habit of wearing a suit, his morning visits to the post office to "do the mail" and chat with the employees, his breakfasts at George's restaurant, his medley of old songs that he played on the piano at family gatherings, his fondness for talking to people, his bedtime stories of Paul Bunyan, his foot races around the block with his kids, and his delight in being the first one on the dance floor with his wife. We will miss him.

Dr. Dietz is survived by his wife, Helen, his two children, George III and Nicholas, their wives Jamie and Magaly, and his grandchildren, George IV and Edward, Carmen and Simon, his siblings Gerald, John, Anthony, Paul, and Lori, and many nieces and nephews.