Retired Columbus OB-GYN physician Jack Lawler dies at 87

Jack Lawler moved to Columbus in the 1960s to help form the most dominant OB-GYN practice in the city, but he ended up making an even bigger impact in his adopted hometown, those who knew him well said.

Lawler died at Columbus Hospice House Wednesday morning at 87 after an extended illness. There will be a visitation at 10 a.m. Nov. 9 at First Baptist Church, where he was a deacon. The memorial service will be at 11 a.m. in the church sanctuary.

Lawler’s body was donated to the Emory University School of Medicine.

“Jack was an excellent friend, the kind of guy who always had a joke and a positive outlook,” said his longtime friend and business partner Cecil Whitaker Jr. “And as a business associate, he was a damn good doctor.”

Though he quit delivering babies long before he retired, Lawler continued his work as a gynecologist until he was 72 years old.

Lawler took the long road to become one of the city’s most respected physicians. After graduating from Georgia Tech in 1952 with a degree in textile engineering, his plan was to return to Carrollton, Ga., and go to work in the family business, Lawler Hosiery Mill.

“His father really wanted him to run the hosiery mill, but that just wasn’t where his heart was,” said his wife of 46 years, Sheri.

But first there was a three-year stint in the Navy. He served as an officer on a Naval destroyer during the Korean War. When he was discharged, he enrolled in the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta.

It was during that time that he met Whitaker, who was a year behind him at the medical college. Lawler was doing his residency at the Macon Hospital, where Whitaker was an intern when the two men started what would become a lifelong friendship and long-running business partnership.

Whitaker, like Lawler, went into the Navy. Whitaker remembers receiving his orders and going directly to Lawler to help him decipher the military lingo.

“I couldn’t understand them,” Whitaker said. “He said I was assigned to a destroyer. I said, ‘I didn’t think they had doctors on destroyers.’ He just said, ‘There will be on that one when you get there.’”

When he finished medical school and his residency, Lawler joined the OB-GYN practice of Harold Jarrell and Robert Carpenter in 1962, the third one into a practice that would continue to grow over the years.

Whitaker followed a few years later as OB-GYN Associates became the most dominant obstetrics and gynecology practice in the city.

“At one point, during the Vietnam-era when there were not a lot of docs on Fort Benning, we were delivering a hundred or more babies a month,” Whitaker said of the practice. “There was not a lot of sleep during that time.”

Asked how many babies Lawler delivered over his career, Whitaker paused.

“There is no way to know,” he said. “I am sure it was in the thousands.”

Columbus businessman and the former managing partner of the Columbus Astros professional baseball club, Dayton Preston Sr. remembers the exact moment he met Lawler.

“I met him in the waiting room 51 years ago when Dayton Junior was born,” Preston said.

The two men became fast friends, the kind who shared meals and looked after each others homes when one of them was out of town.

“When my mother had a stroke, he was the first person I called,” Preston said. “When I got to her house, he was already there, holding her. We took her to the hospital with him holding her in the backseat. That’s the kind of friend he was.”

Preston took a lot of ribbing over the years because he considered Lawler his doctor, even though his specialties were obstetrics and genealogy.

“If I had a health problem, he was my first call,” Preston said. “A lot of my friends used to tease me about that and say, ‘but he’s a gynecologist.’ He had a good time with that.”

In 1979, Preston was putting together an ownership group to purchase the Double-A Houston Astros farm team that played in Columbus’ Golden Park. He approached a number of physicians, including Lawler and Dr. James Andrews, then a orthopedist at the Hughston Clinic.

“Jack was one of the first ones I called,” Preston said.

It turned out to be a good investment. The team, which was purchased for about $100,000, was sold for more than $1 million in 1989 to Steve Bryant, who later moved the club to Zebulon, N.C.

Lawler was active in First Baptist Church, both in church business and volunteer work, said Pastor Jimmy Elder.

“He’s one of the most remarkable Christian gentlemen I have ever met,” Elder said. “He loved people and he loved the practice of medicine.”

Lawler is survived by his wife, Sheri, and daughter, Sheridan Sizemore, and her husband, Dr. Patrick Sizemore of Lancaster, S.C. He has four grandchildren, Rebecca Aburey Sizemore, Mary Cathryn Sizemore, Caroline Grace Sizemore and Jackson Edward Sizemore, his namesake.

This story was originally published November 1, 2017 at 1:21 PM with the headline "Retired Columbus OB-GYN physician Jack Lawler dies at 87."