Jun 222012
 

Dr. Gott's personality came through in his writing, as should yours.

 

 

Physician and columnist, Peter H. Gott died June 13. He was the most famous syndicated medical columnist in the country, receiving 2,500 letters weekly.

 

 

I was proud to publish his books and proud to call him a friend. I visited him  in his Connecticut home once or twice and he came to Fresno once.

His hometown obituary didn’t mention his friend Pat Miller. They had been a couple for two decades and I know she added love, warmth, and direction to his life.

When I was trying to sell Peter on the idea of doing the No Flour, No Sugar Diet book he would only respond that, if we put one word on each page, it would only be 4 pages long. His diet was that simple.

One day when I was talking to Pat on the phone, she said, “We’ll get him to do that diet book” and, at that moment, I knew we would.

I think Peter was glad Pat came on board with the diet book idea, it was the book that made him a New York Times best-selling author and was a grand cap to a fabulous career of helping people.

People ask me what I mean when I say you need to put your voice into your writing. When Peter wrote, he wrote with humor, warmth, and compassion, three characteristics that were part of his spirit. Peter cared about people and he thought doctors were often “pompous asses” and this came  through no matter the subject he was writing about.

He’ll be missed.

Just a write thought.

  3 Responses to “Peter H. Gott, M.D. Found His Voice by Being Himself”

  1. The Hanford Sentinel is still publishing his columns. That is were I first read them. My aunt used to say he was her family doctor.

  2. Peter and I were contemporaries… only months separated our ages. I met him as an FAA Designated Medical Examiner and liked his no-nonsense approach so much that he became my physician of choice. Rest in peace, friend. Bill

    • Hi Bill,
      Thanks for the comment. I liked his no-nonsense approach very much, too. And his warm voice in his writing. Those two reasons are why I contacted him and eventually I published two books with him. One of them a New York Times bestseller. We became great friends as you did.
      Steve

Leave a Reply to Jane Mettee Cancel reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.