Frank Finnerty attended Georgetown on a basketball scholarship from the fall of 1940 through October 1943, as part of the University's accelerated schedules during World War II. He played 11 games over two seasons for the varsity, including five games during the team's run to the national finals.

Dr. Finnerty practiced medicine in Washington for over a half-century, serving as a professor at the Medical School for many years. The author of two books and over 200 research articles, he was a leading expert on the effects of hypertension.

In 2004, Dr. Finnerty was prominently featured in a 2004 book on the life of Jacqueline Kennedy, noting that Finnerty had become a confidant to Mrs. Kennedy.

"He was a cardiologist. Young, handsome, Catholic, a neighbor of Bobby Kennedy," said the book's author, Sally Bedell Smith. "Jackie was over at Bobby Kennedy's house one day, playing touch football and she sprained her ankle. And Dr. Finnerty was there because he was a neighbor. And he treated her. And she just sensed that he was an empathetic person and said, 'Do you mind if I call you from time to time?' So she started to call him."

In the book, Smith wrote that "Jackie conceded to Dr. Frank Finnerty, to whom she confided the most intimate details of her marriage, that her husband was so promiscuous and his extramarital conquests so numerous there was no way either she or he could possibly identify them all." Finnerty had no comment on the book when it was published, and died in 2011.