Dr. William “Bill” Nelson, 86, passed away April 2, 2011, at the Valley Elder Care Center in Grand Forks, N.D. He was born Oct. 1, 1924, in Amery, Wis., the son of Clarence and Dortha Nelson. He attended Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., and the University of Dubuque, Iowa, and then was accepted to the University of Minnesota Medical School in 1944. Following his graduation from medical school in 1947, he interned at the Minneapolis General Hospital and then served for a year as a naval physician at U.S. Naval Hospitals on the East Coast. In 1950, he returned to Rochester, Minn., to start a fellowship in internal medicine. He was called back into the Navy in 1952 during the Korean War and spent two years in California as a naval physician before returning to the Mayo Clinic to complete his fellowship.

Bill met his wife Ruth Anne Lapinske in 1948 while interning at the Minneapolis General Hospital, and they were married three years later in 1951. After Bill completed his Navy service and internal medicine fellowship, he and Ruth settled in Grand Forks, where they raised five children and Bill practiced at the Grand Forks Clinic in the Department of Internal Medicine. Bill acted as chief-of-staff and president of the executive board of St. Michael’s Hospital in 1967. He was an active member of the American College of Internal Medicine and an assistant professor at the University or North Dakota Medical School.