ISLAND Dr. Andre Renard remembered

Dr. André Renard was a well-respected plastic surgeon and a talented artist too.

BY JOE HENDRICKS

SUN COPRRESPONDENT | jhendricks@amisun.com

HOLMES BEACH – Resident Dr. André Renard passed away on Nov. 22 at the age of 82.

Renard, a plastic surgeon, was married to former Manatee County Commissioner and former Holmes Beach Mayor Carol Whitmore. He passed away at the couple’s home in Holmes Beach, where they were married and lived together for 29 years.

“He died of complications due to Parkinson’s disease,” Whitmore said.

Renard was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2012 and he retired from his medical practice in 2014.

Whitmore is a registered nurse and she helped care for Renard when his health began to fail.

“He was bedridden for the past month and a half or so and required total care. I promised him he would never get a bedsore and he didn’t,” she said. A LOVE STORY

Renard and Whitmore got married in 1994.

“We met at a party in Holmes Beach and my girlfriend that I went with met her future husband that same night,” Whitmore said.

“André loved art and polo. He was a self-trained artist who never had an art lesson. He played polo all over the world before I met him. He was born and raised in Belgium. He was a general practitioner in Belgium for five years. He then came to America and did a residency in plastic surgery in Jacksonville. Polo is what brought him to this area. He drove down from Jacksonville because he heard there was a polo field in Sarasota. I met him about seven months after he started practicing medicine in St. Petersburg, but he wanted to be closer to the polo field in Sarasota. When we first met, he was offered a job in Brussels, Belgium, but he didn’t want to leave me or this area,” Whitmore said.

“Our marriage worked well. He worked a lot and I was busy being a nurse, a mayor and a county commissioner. I’m a type-A personality.

CAROL WHITMORE | SUBMITTED For three decades, Carol Whitmore and André Renard shared a love story on and around Anna Maria Island.

I’m not always easy to get along with and he could always bring me back down to Earth. We had a good relationship because we understood each other,” Whitmore said.

Whitmore has a daughter, Janae Rudacille, from a previous marriage.

When asked about Renard, Rudacille said, “He was an incredible stepfather. He was supportive and helpful in anything I did. He was kind and passionate and funny. He gave back to people who were less fortunate and he would treat patients who didn’t have money or insurance.”

Renard is also survived by two daughters and a son from a previous marriage.

MEDICAL PRACTICE

Renard practiced medicine in Manatee County and Sarasota County and performed surgeries at Blake Medical Center, Sarasota Memorial Hospital and other local hospitals.

“On Oct. 30, the Manatee County Medical Society recognized André during their annual gathering and Janae and I went on his behalf,” Whitmore said. “He was among the first surgeons in Florida doing micro-surgery thumb transplants in Jacksonville in the 1980s. He also spearheaded the transgender surgery team in Jacksonville. He helped convince Sarasota Memorial Hospital’s radiology department to start doing sentinel node biopsies for breast cancer patients back when you used to have to go to Moffett Cancer Center in Tampa for that.”

“He was fierce supporter of COVID precautions and totally believed in infection control. He had tuberculosis when he was 8 years old. They isolated him and his parents sent him to a castle in Switzerland. The castle was full of kids who had been exposed to TB and he stayed there for a year. He said it was wonderful. He went to school and skied all the time,” Whitmore said.

RENAISSANCE MAN

“André was a respected physician. He was nice to everyone. He

SEE RENARD, PAGE 25