09/12/2022
It is with great sadness that I inform you that Dr. Welby I. Winstead, Professor Emeritus of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, University of Louisville, School of Medicine, died this past Monday, December 5, 2022. Dr. Winstead had fought cancer valiantly for the past year. Our thoughts and prayers are with his son Dennis Winstead of Chicago, Illinois, his surviving sister, and Ms. Marie Bradby, his ex-wife of Alexandria, Virginia. Dr. Winstead received his undergraduate degree from Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. He received his M.D. degree from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He completed his residency training in Otolaryngology-HNS in 1980 at the University of Chicago. He was a Diplomate of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-HNS, receiving his board certificate in 1980. He then returned to the University of Louisville School of Medicine as a full-time faculty member in the Division of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery in 1981, representing the first African-American as a full-time faculty member in the then Division and now Department. He had a brief hiatus in Private Practice at the Guthrie Clinic in Sayre, Pennsylvania from 1984-88. We were fortunate to have him return to us from 1988 to 2018 as a member of the full-time faculty. He saw the transition of our academic unit from divisional to departmental status in 2015, an event of which he was exceptionally proud. He was for over 30 years, our preeminent faculty member in Rhinology and became the first minimally invasive rhinology and skull base surgeon in the department. He was a precise and technically gifted surgeon. He was a committed educator of 70 or more Otolaryngologist-HNS residents, many of whom have become outstanding contributors to the private practice and academic community. He was often a first, exceptionally broadly well read, an innovator, scholar, and had a tremendous wit and sense of humor. He was an early adopter of health lifestyle and its positive impact on human disease processes, and especially those related to Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. He loved to travel, hike, ride his bike with his vigorous bike community, read, learn, and had a high level of commitment to social justice. He was our first Otolaryngology-HNS African American Faculty member and among the first African American Otolaryngology-HNS academicians in the United States. He will always be fondly remembered as a superb man, and we will miss him greatly. We are currently in communication with his family and friends and will work with his family in planning a memorial after the first of the year in 2023. Please look for future communications from us and take some time to pause and reflect on the many ways Welby influenced us, changed us, challenged us, and made us better.
Jeffrey M. Bumpous, M.D., F.A.C.S.
J. Samuel Bumgardner Professor and Chair
Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery And Communicative Disorders
University of Louisville School of Medicine
