Dr. Clifford Cherry, Noted Cardiologist, Dies
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Dr. Clifford B. Cherry, a cardiologist who nearly 50 years ago was reporting a link between diet and heart disease, was found dead early last week in his home in the Larchmont area of Los Angeles. Death was attributed to a stroke.
The former president of both the local affiliate of the American Heart Assn. and the California American Heart Assn. was 76 when he died Monday. He also had been the founding president of the Los Angeles Heart Institute at St. Vincent Medical Center, scene of some of the nation’s earliest open heart surgery.
He and his late wife, Evelyn, long supported St. Vincent and a floor of the center has been named Cherry Pavilion in tribute to their involvement.
Dr. Cherry earned his medical degree at Stanford University and was on the staff of a San Francisco hospital when in 1938, at the 67th annual convention of the California Medical Assn., he told delegates of a link he had discovered between a lack of Vitamin B-1 and certain types of heart ailments.
He is survived by a son and daughter, four grandchildren and one great-grandchild. The family suggests contributions in his name to the Los Angeles Heart Institute at St. Vincent Medical Center or the American Heart Assn.
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