Caldwell Fletcher

CALDWELL FLETCHER

John C. Fletcher, Ph.D died May 27, 2004 at the age of 72.

Dr. Fletcher was born November 1, 1931 in Bryan, TX to Robert and Estelle Fletcher. He attended the University of the South in Sewanee, TN and graduated with a B.A. optime merens in English literature in 1953. He completed a Masters in Divinity degree cum laude from the Virginia Theological Seminary in 1956 and was ordained in the Episcopal Church. In 1956 - 57, he attended the University of Heidelberg on a Fulbright scholarship, translating Deitrich Bonhoeffer's Creation and Fall into English. In 1969, he earned a Ph.D. degree in Christian Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

After ordination, he was assistant rector of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Birmingham, AL. He was subsequently appointed Chaplain of Washington & Lee University while serving as rector at the Lee Memorial Episcopal Church in Lexington, VA. He later became a member of the faculty at the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, VA where his interest in medical ethics was first passed on to his many students.

In the 1970s, Dr. Fletcher was a founding Fellow of the Hastings Center and the founding President of the Interfaith Metropolitan Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. In 1977, he became the first Chief of the Bioethics Program at the Clinical Center, National Institutes of Health.

In 1987, Dr. Fletcher became the Founding Director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA. In 1999, Dr. Fletcher retired as Kornfeld Professor of Biomedical Ethics and continued to speak and write in the field of biomedical ethics. He was elected Professor Emeritus of Biomedical Ethics in Internal Medicine at the University of Virgina in 1999.

Fletcher authored many texts in the field of medical ethics, including An Introduction to Clinical Ethics and most recently Genetics and Ethics in Global Perspectives, co-authored with Dorothy Wertz, Ph.D., an esteemed and valued colleague in the study of bioethics worldwide. He received many awards for his work and dedication to his field. The University of the South, his alma mater, awarded Dr. Fletcher an honorary degree of Civil Laws in 1993. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities in 2000.

Dr. Fletcher was preceded in death by his parents and sister, Georgianna Fletcher. He is survived by his wife, Adele Davis Woodall Fletcher of Charlottesville, VA; two sisters, Louise Fletcher of Los Angeles, CA and Roberta Ray of Mathews, VA; three children, Caldwell Fletcher of Houston, TX, Page Moss Fletcher of Hillsboro, VA and Adele Fletcher Mays of Knoxville, TN. He is also survived by six grandchildren and a large extended family.

A graveside service will be held at the Guntersville City Cemetery at 3 p.m., Saturday, June 12, 2004 in Guntersville, AL. The family will have a reception at the Church of the Epiphany, 1101 Sunset Dr., Guntersville, AL immediately following the service.Memorial services will be held in association with the University of Virginia in Charlottesville at a future date.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the Alzheimer's Association, 225 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1700, Chicago, IL 60601-7633.