Craig was a medical trailblazer

Dr. M. Elizabeth (Peggy) Craig was a woman of firsts in her professional and civic life.

The longtime Minnetonka resident, who was a former St. Louis Park pediatrician, a leader at Methodist Hospital and a former University of Minnesota regent, died Jan. 13 in St. Louis Park.

Craig, who recently lived in Edina, was 86.

She was one of three women in a sea of about 200 men in the class of 1945 at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine.

But in a Jan. 14, 2001, Star Tribune article, Craig scoffed at the idea that she was a pioneer.

"Ridiculous," she said, laughing. "I wasn't carrying any Holy Grail, or searching for it," said Craig, who practiced until 1986 and had added an Eden Prairie office to the one in St. Louis Park that she began in 1949.

But she was the first woman to be president of the medical staff at St. Louis Park's Methodist Hospital, in the late 1970s; president of the Minnesota Medical Association, in 1986-87, and CEO of the university's Alumni Association, in 1977.

As a regent, she considered and offered policy direction when the university hired Nils Hasselmo, when the ALG transplant drug was sold for profit in violation of the law and when some argued that ROTC should not be offered at the university given the military's policy on gay and lesbian service members.

Through it all, Craig was an "astute" and "compassionate" leader, said Dr. Bryan Neel of Rochester, a former regent and retired Mayo Clinic surgeon.

"She had a splendid capacity to synthesize a lot of information and come to a good decision," Neel said. "Peggy was never reticent to give a candid opinion, but her behavior was always statesmanlike."

In 1989, the university gave her its Distinguished Service Award.

Earl Dresser of Eden Prairie, retired president of Methodist Hospital, recalled that at the end of her medical career, she was seeing the grandchildren of her early patients.

Dr. Dick Woellner, a retired internist at the old St. Louis Park Medical Center, worked with Craig at Methodist.

"She spoke up, never hesitated to give her opinion," he said. "She was a leader before the time women served in leadership roles."

Craig's daughter, Libby Lincoln of Plymouth, said she managed to attend nearly all their student events.

When Lincoln and her brother were infants in the 1950s, she took them on house calls.

When Lincoln was a Girl Scout, Craig led the troop, and she saved the time it would take to change clothes by wearing her scout leader's uniform on hospital rounds.