Dr. John J. Newton, who as the Lucas County health board’s longtime president worked toward an eventual merger of county and Toledo health departments and presided as the new health board passed an indoor smoking ban, died April 18 in the Houston home of his son Tom, whom he’d been visiting. He was 95.

He was in declining health, his daughter Mary Westphal said. He and his late wife, Dorothy, had lived at Sunset Village in Sylvania Township.

Dr. Newton retired in 1998 as Toledo Hospital’s director of medical services, having become director of its then-new alcoholism treatment center in 1980.

His service continued in part-time roles, including as medical director of the Cordelia Martin Health Center. He was physician liaison from 2003-14 for Toledo/​Lucas County CareNet, which helps low-income patients with health care.

“He was a roll-up-your-sleeves and get-to-work kind of guy,” said Jan Ruma, executive director of CareNet, who also is vice president of the Hospital Council of Northwest Ohio.

That work included recruiting physicians, especially specialists, to donate their services.

“When Jack called, people responded,” Ms. Ruma said. “He was responsible for people getting the health care they needed.”

For about a quarter-century, starting in 1954, Dr. Newton had a family practice in Sylvania, where he’d grown up. He delivered hundreds of babies and treated patients of all ages, in his office or in their homes.

“He always wanted to come back to Sylvania and be the Sylvania family practice doctor, and he did that,” said Ms. Westphal, a member of Sylvania City Council. “He was very much a core of the community.”

Dr. Newton was appointed to the county health board in 1962 and in 1969 was elected president. Several months later, he and the president of the city health board said a merger of the health departments would result in improved services.

Decades of effort and negotiation followed. He was president of the county board when the merger took effect Jan. 1, 2000, and was elected president of the new city-county board.

“He was a consensus builder,” said W. Scott Fry, president and chief executive of the Hospital Council of Northwest Ohio. “He pursued that with dogged determination.”

In 2001, the city-county health board approved an indoor smoking ban considered one of the toughest in the country. The Ohio Supreme Court later struck down the ban, but Ohio voters approved a statewide indoor smoking ban in 2006. As that initiative took form in 2005 Dr. Newton said he was proud of his board’s actions.

“It created a ripple effect that is showing up now,” Dr. Newton said then. “This is a health issue, not an economic issue.”

Dr. Newton retired from the health board in 2004.

He was a nominee for the 2003 Jefferson Award for his service to the community, including on county mental health and alcohol and drug addiction boards.

“I’ve been happy with what’s happened in my life,” Dr. Newton told The Blade in 2003. “I think it’s been productive and, at the same time, fun.”

Born Dec. 16, 1925, in Hamler, Ohio, to Ada and Joseph Newton, he was a 1943 graduate of Burnham High School in Sylvania and served stateside in the Army Air Corps during World War II. He attended the University of Toledo and the Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola University of Chicago, and completed his internship at San Joaquin Hospital in Stockton, Calif.

“He was always focused on doing the right thing and setting an example,” his daughter said, “but he was fun and had tons of friends and loved travel and golf and playing gin rummy with his buddies.”

He and the former Dorothy DeMet married July 2, 1949. She died March 27, 2020.

Surviving are his sons, John, David, and Thomas Newton; daughters, Mary Westphal and Patricia Virost; 12 grandchildren, and 12 great-grandchildren.

A celebration to honor the lives of Dr. Newton and his wife will be held June 11 from 4-7 p.m. at Reeb Funeral Home, Sylvania.

The family suggests tributes to the ProMedica Toledo Hospital Foundation.

First Published April 29, 2021, 4:00 a.m.