DALLAS, June 25 -- J. Walter Sinclair, a Twin Falls, Idaho, attorney, and Lynn A. Smaha, M.D., Ph.D., executive vice president for corporate affairs of Guthrie Clinic, Sayre, Pa., Friday were elected chairman of the board and president, respectively, of the American Heart Association.

Richard P. Southworth, who recently retired as managing director of the Cleveland office of J&H Marsh & McClennan Inc., was re-elected secretary-treasurer.

The new officers, elected during the American Heart Association's annual Delegate Assembly, will serve during the 1999-2000 fiscal year.

William J. Bryant, managing partner in the Birmingham, Ala., law firm of Feld, Hyde, Lyle, Wertheimer, & Bryant, was chosen as chairman-elect. Rose Marie Robertson, M.D., professor of medicine, associate director of cardiology and vice chair for academic affairs in the department of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tenn., was named president-elect.

Sinclair, a partner in the law firm of Benoit, Alexander, Sinclair, Harwood & High, graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor of arts degree in 1975 and from the University of Idaho Law School with a juris doctorate in 1978.

He is past president of the Fifth Judicial Bar Association, and a member of the Idaho State Bar, the American Bar Association, the Idaho and the International Associations of Defense Counsels. He is a fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers.

Sinclair became involved in the American Heart Association in the mid 1980s as president of the Magic Valley Division in Idaho. He was chairman of the Idaho Affiliate and later was a member of the board of directors of the merged Idaho-Montana Affiliate. He was regional vice president for the Northwest-Rocky Mountain Region. Sinclair serves on the American Heart Association Board of Directors, chairs the Administrative Cabinet and serves on numerous other committees.

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Contact: Floyd Wood
214-706-1383
American Heart Association
26-Jun-1999