On April 7, 2025, George Chilton Piper, the youngest of the four sons of Lewis A. and Anna Z. Piper, passed away. He is survived by his loving wife of 55 years, Sally S. Piper, and two children: Jennifer Anne Piper of Lexington, Kentucky, and Geoffrey Chilton Piper of Denver, Colorado.
George was born on February 23, 1939, and grew up in Midway, Kentucky. After his early years in the Midway school system, he attended Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire from 1952 to 1956; and he obtained his A.B. Degree, concentrating in English, from Harvard College, where he was a member of Dunster House, in 1960. Shortly thereafter, he enlisted in the Intelligence Corps of the US Army for three years, during which he served as a Special Agent attached to the Special Forces in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, from which he was honorably discharged in 1964.
Immediately thereafter, he enrolled at the University of Kentucky College of Law where he graduated with a J.D. degree in 1967. Upon graduation, George joined the law firm of Martin, Ockerman and Brabant in Lexington where he was a law partner for 20 plus years. During this tenure, and to better serve his clients, in 1983 he moved his family to the Boston, Massachusetts area where he enrolled in and obtained a Master of Public Health degree (with a concentration in Legal Medicine) from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1984.
After returning to his Lexington law firm for approximately 8 more years, George and 2 of his partners, Barbara J. Bowers and Dean T. Wellman, along with their long-tenured and devoted Legal Assistant, Linda F. Peyton, founded the law firm of Piper, Wellman and Bowers (now Piper and Bowers) in 1992 which specializes in defending clients in the areas of Health Care, Medical Malpractice litigation and legal medicine generally. After devoting more than 50 years to the broad professional practice of legal medicine, George retired from his law firm in 2020.
In addition to his parents, George was predeceased by his three brothers: William B. Bowman of Houston, Texas; Robert L. Piper of New Bedford, Massachusetts; and David Z. Piper (his wife Theresa) of Palo Alto, California. He is also survived by many nieces and nephews living all across the United States from Hawaii, California, Texas, North Carolina, to New York.
George was caring, witty, charming, had an amazing memory and a good person who cared about others. George's life was filled with passions and loves: learning and the law; literature and poetry, with a fondness for Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare; music, especially Frankie Laine and Johnny Cash; baseball and his beloved Boston Red Sox, especially Ted Williams and attending Spring Training games; UK basketball; playing bridge; traveling to Ann Arbor for legal seminars, Sanibel Island, Asheville, N.C., and driving West many times to San Francisco; and, most importantly, his family.
Donations may be made in the names of his parents (Lewis A. Piper and Anna Z. Piper) to Midway University of Midway, Kentucky, where George's father Lewis was President for twenty-five years, and in George's name to The Salvation Army of Lexington, KY and the Lexington Humane Society.
Slightly modified from what was published by Lexington Herald-Leader from April 8 to April 11, 2025.
