In Memoriam: Robert Cooke, M.D., Former Director of Johns Hopkins Children's Center

To the East Baltimore community

Dear Colleagues,

It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of Robert Cooke, M.D., the fourth director the Department of Pediatrics and former director of the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. Bob died on Feb. 2 at his Martha's Vineyard, Mass., home. He was 93.

A brilliant scientist, an intensely charismatic leader and an enormously talented clinician, Bob was also one of the most influential pediatricians in America, whose work reshaped the Department of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins and child health on a national scale.

Bob was the catalyst behind Head Start, the federal program that provides academic and social services to millions of low-income children and their families each year. His contributions, which run the gamut from bench science to clinic to public health, have collectively improved the health of generations of children in this country and worldwide.

Bob was somewhat of a medical Renaissance man, who studied metabolic disorders, nutritional deficiencies and cystic fibrosis with the same zeal that he applied to his study of the psychological effects of hospitalization on children and families. He explored topics as diverse as prenatal diagnosis of fetal disorders and the ethical and legal aspects of mental retardation. Even though he spent countless hours in the lab, Bob's mind was ceaselessly fascinated by matters outside of the test tube and, indeed, beyond the purely medical. He wrote essays and commentaries that ventured into the realms of social justice and philosophy, including "Natural and Nurtural Limitations on a Free Society," "The Free Choice Principle in the Care of the Mentally Retarded" and a memorable farewell address titled "The Gorks Are Gone." In 1965, he co-authored a still-classic textbook, The Biosocial Basis of Mental Retardation, a seminal treatise on intellectual disability.

Nowhere was Bob's passion as intense as it was in the study of mental retardation, a passion fueled not by scientific curiosity but by personal experience. He was the father of two daughters, born in 1948 and 1951, with a genetic disorder called cri-du-chat syndrome, characterized by intellectual disability and delayed development.

Through his connections with the Kennedy family — he was senior medical adviser to President John F. Kennedy and family pediatrician to the president's sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, an early advocate for people with mental retardation  — Bob shaped U.S. public health policy on mental disabilities. In 1961, Bob chaired a task force to study child development whose report called on the White House to form a federal agency that would study developmental disorders. That document became the blueprint for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the federal agency within the National Institutes of Health that studies maternal, fetal and child health and issues treatment guidelines.

In 1964, under marching orders from President Lyndon B. Johnson and his War on Poverty campaign, Bob headed a task force of sociologists, pediatricians and psychologists to develop a national program — eventually known as Head Start — to help children born in poverty overcome social and education obstacles. Today, the program provides health, nutrition and social services to more than a million children and their families each year.

Bob's leadership of the Department of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins from 1956 to 1973 was nothing short of transformative. On his watch, the children's hospital moved from its original Harriet Lane Home to the Children's Medical and Surgical Center, which housed the children's hospital at Johns Hopkins from 1964 to 2012.

Much of Bob's scientific work focused on understanding metabolic dysfunction and nutritional deficiencies of early childhood. His work on the physiology of salt and water metabolism led to changes in infant feeding practices worldwide and helped reduce childhood death rates.

Bob earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University's Sheffield Scientific School in 1941 and a medical degree from the Yale School of Medicine in 1944. He completed his internship and residency at New Haven Hospital, taking two years off from his medical apprenticeship to serve in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. In 1950, Bob joined the pediatrics faculty at Yale. In 1956, he left his alma mater for Johns Hopkins, where he became director of the Department of Pediatrics and director of the Children's Center.

Bob left Johns Hopkins in 1973 to become vice chancellor for health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1977, he became president of the Medical College of Pennsylvania and, later, the pediatrician-in-chief at Buffalo Children's Hospital. He retired in 1989.

Bob was the recipient of numerous awards, including the John Howland Award in pediatrics, considered by many as the specialty's most prestigious accolade, as well as the American Academy of Pediatrics' top bioethics tribute, the William G. Bartholome Award for Ethical Excellence, named for the late William Bartholome, who had been one of Bob's residents.

Please join us in extending our deepest condolences to Bob's wife of 35 years, Sharon Riley Cooke; three daughters, Susan, Anne and Kim; two sons, W. Robert and Christopher; and two grandchildren.

Paul B. Rothman, M.D.
Dean of the Medical Faculty
CEO, Johns Hopkins Medicine 

Ronald R. Peterson
President, The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System
EVP, Johns Hopkins Medicine

George Dover, M.D.
Given Professor of Pediatrics
Director, Department of Pediatrics
Director, Johns Hopkins Children's Center