Last month, Heidi Jaeger Smith replaced physician Robert Winn on the Summit County Health Board. Winn served on the board for 30 years.
Winn moved to Park City in 1978. He was one of the founding physicians of the Park City Clinic on Bonanza Drive.
He said he joined the board and kept pursuing reappointments because he was asked to.
“Someone asks you to do a favor and so you help out,” he said Friday on his way to visit a daughter in India. “Every time I wanted to leave they said they wanted me to stay.”
Winn participated in many programs of the Health Department, but one of his most distinctive memories from his years of service is helping prepare for the 2002 Winter Olympics.
The Health Department was asked to participate in emergency preparedness plans. When the assignment was first given, everyone was planning in terms of public health needs, he said.
“We were thinking of the potential for infectious diseases from people coming from around the world,” he explained.
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, everything changed.
“We had to prepare for any type of disaster that could happen,” he said.
The board had to make a plan to respond to bioterrorism, chemical weapons, anthrax and nuclear attacks. There had to be a plan for integrating emergency medical services if the unthinkable happened.
“There was incredible focus incredible fear,” he said.
Winn said he finally stepped down from the Health Board because someone discovered there was a term limit for board members which he had already exceeded.
He plans to do more traveling and said it’s time for someone more available and “on-hand” to help the department.
Winn said he could not pinpoint an achievement he was most proud of because he’s proud of all that the department accomplishes and the work everyone associated with it does for the community.