Obituaries

John William GoldschmidtMedical Official

John William Goldschmidt, 80, a physician who specialized in physical medicine and rehabilitation and held prominent medical appointments in Philadelphia, Chicago and Washington, died Feb. 9 at a hospice in Boca Raton, Fla. He had congestive heart failure.

In the mid-1980s, Dr. Goldschmidt became the founding medical director of the National Rehabilitation Hospital, on the grounds of Washington Hospital Center.

He was also chairman of the rehabilitation medicine department at Washington Hospital Center and professor of rehabilitation medicine at Georgetown University's medical school.

Starting in 1992, he spent five years as national director of the Department of Veterans Affairs' Rehabilitation Research and Development Service.

He was a Philadelphia native and served in the Army in the Pacific during World War II. He was a graduate of Villanova University and a 1954 graduate of Jefferson Medical College, now Thomas Jefferson University, in Philadelphia.

He worked at Thomas Jefferson University until 1976, serving as the founding dean of its College of Allied Health Sciences and organizing its first multiple disability rehabilitation center for the severely handicapped.

Dr. Goldschmidt then spent many years in Chicago on the faculty of Northwestern University's medical school and as associate medical director and director of research and education at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

He received many medical honors and was a former president of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine as well as the National Association of Rehabilitation Research Training Centers.

For more than a decade, he served on advisory committees of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations that dealt with long-term care and hospital accreditation.

In 1998, he moved from Washington to Avalon, N.J., where he long had a home.

Survivors include his wife of 53 years, Marion Stodder Goldschmidt of Avalon; six children, John Goldschmidt of Wayne, Pa., Karen Peterson of Greensboro, N.C., Christine Colnon and Nancy Anderson, both of Chicago, and Marian Miller and Susan Atkinson, both of Boca Raton; two sisters; a brother; and 10 grandchildren.

Barbara Davis HobbsSchool Volunteer, Secretary

Barbara Davis Hobbs, 93, a former volunteer and school secretary in Montgomery County public schools, died Feb. 8 of Alzheimer's disease at her home in Maplewood Park Place in Bethesda.