Dr. Samuel Logan, surgeon who helped establish West Jefferson Medical Center, dies at 88
December 01, 2010 Times Picayune
Submitted by N.O.V.A.


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Dr. Samuel Logan, a New Orleans surgeon who helped launch a program that has brought dozens of health-care
professionals to Central America annually for 19 years, died Tuesday at his New Orleans home. He was 88.

A lifelong New Orleanian who was the fourth doctor in his family to bear his name, Dr. Logan got the idea of
volunteering in Latin America — first in Honduras, then in Nicaragua — after spending a month working in a
hospital in India in 1983.

Dr. Logan, who also helped establish the hospital now known as West Jefferson Medical Center, said in a 1984
Times-Picayune interview that he had headed to India with his wife, Margot, because he wanted to do a
different kind of volunteer work.

The hours were long, the conditions were squalid, and the patient load was unrelenting — not unlike what he
had seen in Charity Hospital in New Orleans, Dr. Logan said.

“But at Charity, I knew there were other doctors and nurses to handle it,” he said. “In India, there weren’t
others to cover for us.”

Mrs. Logan worked, too, doing inventory and cleanup jobs in the hospital’s pharmaceutical-supply warehouse.

Although the hours were long and the workload intense, “it was soul-satisfying and filled a gap in my life
as a doctor,” Dr. Logan said in the interview.

So when the Logans learned that the Episcopal Church’s Mississippi diocese had established a medical mission
in Honduras and urged New Orleanians at Trinity Episcopal Church to get involved, they leapt at the chance,
said Dr. John Hevron, who worked with his wife, Mary Margaret, and the Logans to set up the mission.

After five years in Honduras, the mission moved to Nicaragua, where it has been ever since. Last year,
Hevron said, about 55 medical personnel from across the United States made the journey, including doctors,
nurses, a dentist, medical students and a veterinarian.

A total of about 25,000 people have been treated during these trips, he said.

Hevron said participants, including members of Dr. Logans family, saw a different Sam Logan during these
trips.

In New Orleans, “he was a confident man and competent,” Hevron said, “but on the medical mission, we saw an
example of pure compassion and tenderness.”

Dr. Logan, who earned undergraduate and medical degrees at Tulane University, moved to the west bank in
1954. Back then, that side of the Mississippi River lacked a hospital where people could be treated and
doctors could practice, said Dr. Howard Nelson, who was Dr. Logan’s partner for more than 30 years.

To fill that need, Dr. Logan was part of the team that worked to establish West Jefferson General Hospital,
which opened in 1960. He was on the hospital’s first board of directors, and he became its chairman.

Dr. Logan, who had been a flight surgeon in the Air Force, was a fellow of the American College of Surgeons,
a former president of the Tulane Medical Alumni Association and a member of the Trinity Episcopal Church
vestry.

Survivors include his wife, Margot Logan; two sons, Samuel Logan Jr. of Roswell, Ga., and George King Logan
II of New Orleans; two daughters, Melanie Logan Mauldin of Columbia, S.C. and Margaret “Puff” Logan Fried of
Houston; 12 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held Friday at noon at Trinity Episcopal Church, 1329 Jackson Ave. Visitation
will begin at 11 a.m., and a reception in the Parish House will follow the service.

Tharp-Sontheimer-Tharp Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.