July 4, 1926 – December 25, 2020
Dr. Hood is survived by his wife Dolores of Devine, TX; son Richard and his wife Linda of Dilley, TX; son Tom and his wife Laura of Warrenton, MO; daughter Bonnie and her husband Keith of Houston, TX; son John and his wife Suelln of Corvallis, OR; stepdaughter Rebecca Martinez and her husband Ronald Martinez of Pearsall, TX; stepdaughter Teresa Garcia of Cotulla, TX; thirteen grandchildren, and more than twenty great-grandchildren.
Dr. Hood is preceded in death by his parents Richard Hall Hood Sr. and Mary Lee Thomas, brother Oliver, sisters Hazel and Martha, his first wife Bonnie Dean Herrick.
Dr. Hood provided health care services to South Texas communities for almost fifty years, starting as a surgeon at the La Salle and Frio Hospitals from 1968 to 1992. In 1991, he and his wife opened a chain of medical clinics with an office in Dilley that expanded to include locations in Orange Grove, Cotulla, and Pearsall. He retired in 2017, ending a medical career that spanned nearly seventy years. Dr. Hood was a military veteran who served our country as a Navy lieutenant in the final years of WWII before returning home to study medicine at the University of Kentucky. He went back overseas to serve during the Korean War, then transferred to the United States Air Force and interned at veterans’ hospitals in Oakland, San Fernando, and Los Angeles. He was chief of surgery for Hospital Parks Air Force Base in California and became a renowned thoracic surgeon that conducted many of the first open-heart surgeries in history. He was a founding member of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, published numerous scholarly works in the field of medicine, and traveled the globe to share his expertise across Europe and Asia. He continued to serve his country in the early years of the Vietnam War before retiring as an Air Force Colonel in 1968 and starting his private medical practice.