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September 29, 2004
A public memorial service for Matthew L. Tayback,
ScD, adjunct professor, Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene & Public
Health, lecturer, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and director of Biostatistics,
JHBMC General Clinical Research Center, will be held at Bayview
in the Asthma & Allergy Auditorium (1st floor) on October 13, 9
a.m.
I am profoundly saddened to inform you that Dr. Matthew
Tayback died on Sunday, September 19. Dr. Tayback has been the biostatistician
for the GCRC since 1993. He brought an enormous depth of knowledge,
clarity of insight and a talent for teaching to his position and will
be deeply missed. An endowed fund is being established at Johns Hopkins
in memory of Dr. Tayback. If you would like to make a gift to this fund
in his memory, please send checks to:
Dr. Matthew Tayback Endowed Fund
c/o Jennifer Goforth
100 N. Charles Street
Suite 445
Baltimore, MD 21201
Sincerely,
Pam Ouyang, M.D.
Program Director
General Clinical Research Center
Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Campus
Matthew L. Tayback, a biostatistician and public health advocate who
was the first director of the state's Office on Aging, died of cancer
Sunday at Greater Baltimore Medical Center's Gilchrist Center. The Homeland
resident was 85.
During a long career in public health -- including jobs as deputy Baltimore
health commissioner and assistant state health secretary -- Dr. Tayback
was in the forefront on such issues as infant mortality, teen pregnancy
and tobacco risks.
"He was a talented, extremely competent individual with a lot of
experience and knowledge," said former Gov. Marvin Mandel, who
named him in 1973 to head the Office on Aging, a sub-Cabinet post. "You
could sit down, talk with him and work things out while discussing highly
important issues."
Born in Tarrytown, N.Y., Dr. Tayback earned his undergraduate degree
in mathematics from Harvard University and a master's in biostatistics
from Columbia University. He then joined the Army and served in Europe
during World War II.
During the Battle of the Bulge, he used his knowledge of math to calibrate
distances for bombardments. He participated in the liberation of the
Dachau concentration camp and was awarded the Bronze Star and French
Croix de Guerre. He retired as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves.
In 1949, he moved to Baltimore to earn his doctorate from what is now
the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
He worked in the fields of international health, biostatistics and health
policy and management. He was also on the faculty of the Hopkins School
of Medicine. He served as deputy city health commissioner from 1954
until becoming an assistant state health secretary in 1969.
A 1963 article on Dr. Tayback in The Sun called him "the specialist
who gives the city its annual checkup using a slide rule rather than
a stethoscope."
Reviewing demographic and census data in the late 1950s, he predicted
that Baltimore's population would age drastically as a result of younger
families moving to the suburbs.
He also noted racial change in the city, pointing out in a 1959 Evening
Sun article that African-American first-graders for the first time outnumbered
their white counterparts in the public schools as a result of migration
patterns from the South and from Middle Atlantic states.
In 1967, he oversaw the opening of a family planning clinic in Northwest
Baltimore where birth-control pills were distributed -- with parental
permission -- to sexually active teens.
Dr. Tayback became an advocate for seniors during a decade heading the
Office on Aging.
"He was one of the first people to recognize the birth rate was
dropping and the life expectancy was extending," said Dr. Pearl
S. German, a colleague and professor emeritus at the Hopkins medical
school.
"He was an astute, profound man. In all matters related to health
and geriatrics, this man was the authority. He was such a humble and
gentle man, and so very knowledgeable," said Samuel A. Culotta,
former chairman of the city's Commission on Aging and Retirement Education.
Family members said Dr. Tayback worked worldwide to improve health in
developing countries. In the early 1950s, he visited Africa to show
villagers how to build wells for safe drinking water. He also worked
on population planning and reduction of tuberculosis in India.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, he worked as a public health consultant
in Pakistan, Ethiopia and Middle Eastern countries. He advised governments
on how to improve health systems and teaching in medical schools.
At his death, he was working in Taiwan and Gaza, on the West Bank, where
he was evaluating the nutritional status of Palestinians as a member
of the Johns Hopkins Center for International Emergency, Disaster and
Relief Studies.
In 1993, Dr. Tayback became the biostatistician at Johns Hopkins Bayview
Medical Center's general clinical research center.
"He was a tremendous teacher," said the center's program director,
Dr. Pamela Ouyang. "You could see the delight in the knowledge
and importance of medicine in him."
On a 1999 visit to Baltimore, Queen Noor of Jordan recognized Dr. Tayback's
contributions to health in her country.
Dr. Tayback was a member and elder of Govans Presbyterian Church, where
he worked for the creation of Epiphany House, a senior citizen residence
in Govans. He also worked for the creation of Stadium Place, an affordable
senior housing community on the site of the old Memorial Stadium.
"He said to me, 'Every church that has a Sunday school building
for children should also provide services and housing for their seniors,'"
said his pastor, the Rev. Jack Sharp.
"He practiced what he preached," said Dr. Tayback's daughter,
Sheila T. Leatherman of Minneapolis, a public health professor at the
University of North Carolina who also teaches at Cambridge University
in England. "His philosophy was that each of us had a duty to make
the world a better place. He was remarkable in the diversity of what
he did."
Also surviving are his wife of 59 years, the former Anita Mary Moffat;
two sons, Robert M. Tayback of Cockeysville and M. Gordon Tayback of
Ruxton; a sister, Sally Fondeur of Plainfield, N.J.; and four grandchildren.
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