Otolaryngologist Hugh O. de Fries; Navy Physician, Medical Educator

Dr. Hugh O. de Fries, 81, a nationally known otolaryngologist, Navy physician and medical educator, died April 13 of congestive heart failure at Montgomery General Hospital. He was a resident of Woodbine.

During a long career as a clinician, surgeon and educator in the field of otolaryngology -- the combined treatment of the ear, nose and throat -- Dr. de Fries helped make the National Naval Medical Center the principal facility in the Navy hospital system for patients with head and neck cancer.

He performed groundbreaking reconstructive surgery on Marines who received head and neck injuries in Vietnam and pioneered several procedures, including new chemotherapy treatment for head and neck tumors, lower jaw and tongue transplants and surgical procedures to treat hard-to-reach tumors.

As a consultant to the presidential physician and surgeon general of the Navy from 1970 to 1978, he treated Presidents Johnson, Nixon and Ford as well as numerous Cabinet officials, members of Congress and international heads of state.

Dr. de Fries was born in Baltimore and enlisted in the Navy in 1943, serving as a line officer from 1945 to 1949.

He graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 1947 and continued his studies at the University of Maryland's dental school in Baltimore, graduating cum laude in 1954. He received his medical degree from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in 1957. He became assistant chief of otolaryngology at the National Naval Medical Center in 1964 and was chairman from 1970 to 1978.

From 1975 to 1978, Dr. de Fries also was a professor of surgery and the first chairman of the division of otolaryngology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda.

After his retirement from the Navy Medical Corps in 1978, he became director of the head and neck tumor service department of otolaryngology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In 1979, he became chairman of the otolaryngology department at Washington Hospital Center. Two years later, he was appointed professor of surgery and chief of the division of otolaryngology at Georgetown University Medical Center.

Dr. de Fries, who retired from Georgetown in 1989, was an avid sailor who also enjoyed spending summers in Maine and working on his farm in Woodbine.

His wife, Carol F. de Fries, died in 2005. A daughter, Pamela M. Bishop, died in 2002.

Survivors include three daughters, Grace A. de Fries of Long Beach, N.Y., Patricia C. de Fries of San Francisco and Carol J. de Fries of Philadelphia; and seven grandchildren.