Dr. John A. Winder, a Sylvania allergist whose compassion toward patients extended to accepting token in-kind payment from those who couldn’t afford treatment, died Jan. 31 in Hospice of Northwest Ohio in Perrysburg Township. He was 81.

He died from hemorrhaging stroke, his daughter Julie Winder said.

“I would put him as a very patient-centric, brilliant, compassionate physician, and a professor [who] taught us how to mange patient care, both the theory and the practical part of it, as well as the business aspect of private practice,” said Dr. Sudhir Rao, a former coworker. “He taught me a lot.”

Dr. Winder retired in 2017 after 39 years of private practice, having treated generations of allergy and asthma patients.

For many years, his office was on Alexis Road at Monroe Street in Sylvania before moving about 2015 to the 5800 block of Monroe, also in Sylvania.

At his research center, he conducted clinical pharmaceutical trials, in which he often enrolled qualifying patients with no health insurance thus giving them temporary access to full medical care.

At the cusp of the 1990s and 2000s, Dr. Winder also served on the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology board of regents.

Judy Gahler, Dr. Winder’s longtime head nurse, said “he was wonderful” to his patients and his employees.

“He was very caring, very considerate, very passionate,” Ms. Gahler said. “He cared about all of his patients and his employees.”

Ms. Gahler recalled that he often accepted token in-kind payment from patients who had difficulties paying their bills.

Homemade delicacies such as pierogi and tamales were among those payments.

He was also “very funny, and very personable with his patients and everyone who knew him,” Ms. Winder said.

“In restaurants, at stores, and even recently at the hospice, he encountered his former patients who would always greet him,” she said. “And he would always talk to them.”

Born Feb. 16, 1943, in Toledo to Genevieve and Gordon Winder, he was raised in Toledo and graduated from Whitmer High School.

Ms. Winder said her father was always very interested in the world.

She recalled how he and his parents reminisced about him staying indoors in the summer reading the encyclopedia “from A to Z” at the time he was in junior high school.

He received a bachelor’s degree in science in the late 1960s from the University of Toledo and a medical degree from West Virginia University in the early 1970s before completing a medical residency in pediatrics at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Winder then joined the U.S. Army and served as an army doctor at Fort Carson in Colorado until his honorable discharge in 1972. He completed an allergy and asthma fellowship at what was then the National Asthma Center in Denver before establishing a private practice and research center in Sylvania in 1978.

In the early 1960s, he married the former Judith Mutchler. They raised two daughter together and later divorced.

Julie Winder said that to be a part of her father’s life “you needed to embrace an endearing amount of clutter and chaos, but then you would be totally accepted and supported, no matter your path in life.”

An outgoing man, Dr. Winder held a 50th birthday party on Feb. 16, 1993, at a Sylvania restaurant for those born at Toledo Hospital the month and year he was born there.

Dr. Winder told The Blade at the time he got the idea after discovering that one of his patients was also born at Toledo Hospital in February, 1943. He later established that a total of 120 babies were born at the hospital that month.

He then tried to track them down to invite them to the party.

After reading about his effort in The Blade, about five of them attended the party, where they reminisced about the former Tiedtke’s store downtown and other Toledo landmarks.

In his free time, Dr. Winder liked to be with friends and family, especially his grandchildren.

He also enjoyed collecting Willys Overland CJ-2A Jeeps, fly-fishing the Au Sable River in northern Michigan, and rooting for the University of Michigan football team.

Dr. Winder was preceded in death by his brothers, Gordon Winder Jr. and William Winder.

Surviving are his daughters, Jennifer Winder and Julie Winder, and five grandchildren.

A celebration of life ceremony is planned in early spring. Arrangements are by American Cremation Events.

The family suggests tributes to the Trout Unlimited Mason-Griffith Founders Chapter in Grayling, Mich.

First Published February 16, 2025, 5:00 a.m.