Dr. Frederick “Fred” Wirth Jr., 68, the physician to America’s first test-tube baby, has died, his family said Friday.
Wirth died Monday of pancreatic cancer in Carson City, Nev., said his wife, Linda Wirth. He moved three years ago to nearby Minden, 50 miles to the south.
Wirth gained national attention as the neonatologist who cared for Elizabeth Jordan Carr after her birth Dec. 28, 1981.
Carr, now a 27-year-old news content producer for the Boston Globe’s website, , recalled Wirth as “the guy who took me out of the delivery room and carried me under his arm like I was a football.”
Wirth pronounced her healthy and normal at the first news conference, which the nation watched eagerly at a time when such medical technology was new and scary.
“I don’t look at him as a doctor; he’s family. It (his death) is part of losing your family,” Carr said.
Raymond A. Brown, 94, a veteran defense lawyer whose high-profile clients included former boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, has died.
Brown, a Montclair, N.J., resident, died Friday from pulmonary disease, said his son and law partner Ray Brown Jr. He had practiced law for 59 years.
Carter was convicted along with another man of murdering three people in a Paterson, N.J., bar in 1966. Their convictions were overturned in 1975, but both were found guilty again in 1976. After serving 19 years, Carter was freed in 1985 when a federal judge overturned the second convictions.
Family members and colleagues say Brown’s well- known cases were just one aspect of a career that was fueled by a desire to defend the defenseless.
“He represented so many ordinary people,” his son told The Star-Ledger of Newark. “People who were drug addicts, people who were down on their luck, people who had done dumb things.”
