Alumni News

Obituaries

The CSPH community extends its sympathy and condolences to the family of Melody Arons, who died recently. Melody’s father is Raymond Arons, Dr. P.H., M.P.H., assistant professor, Division of Sociomedical Sciences.

David Arthur Barrett, M.A., a 1957 CSPH graduate in hospital administration, died of a heart attack last August. He was 70.

Barrett retired in 1992 as president and chief executive officer at the Medical Center of Central Massachusetts in Worcester. He was the assistant executive director of Springfield Hospital and director of North Shore Hospital in Manhassett, New York. He was also a former president of the Massachusetts Hospital association, and resided in Falmouth, Massachusetts and Savannah, Georgia.

Lowell E. Bellin, M.D., former head of the Division of Health Administration and educator to thousands of students, died in New York City at the age of 68.

A 1948 graduate of Yale University, Bellin received his medical degree from the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center. He served in medical capacities with the Air force and the National institutes of Health, and was chief of medicine at Hadassah Hospital in Beersheba, Israel, as well as Commissioner of Health in Springfield, Massachusetts.

In 1966, Bellin became associate Medical Director of the Health insurance Plan of Greater New York (HIP). He was appointed First Deputy Health Commissioner in 1969, moving to CSPH in 1972. His first stint here was cut short when he was recalled to public service as New York City Commissioner of Health, Chairman of the Board of Health, Health Services Administrator, Chairman of the Board of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, and Chairman of the Comprehensive Health Planning Agency—five jobs, one salary.

Bellin reorganized prison health services, expanded sexually transmitted disease services for the gay population, introduced legislation requiring window guards in buildings with children, and prohibited the transport of nuclear wastes through the city. He also championed a landmark smoking ban on elevators and in other public places.

In 1977, Bellin returned to CSPH, where he organized the joint Master of Public Health/Master of Science Program in Urban Planning.

Biochemist Rachel Gillett Fruchter, Ph.D., M.P.H., a 1973 CSPH graduate, died in a bicycle accident in Central Park last summer.

London-born and the daughter of a botanist, Fruchter was known for her commitment to women’s health issues, as well as her gynecological cancer research. One of her main interests was the health care provided for women from the Caribbean islands and other immigrant groups in central Brooklyn. She also contributed to Our Bodies, Our Selves: A Book By and for Women, published by Simon & Schuster.

Fruchter received her undergraduate degree in biochemistry from Oxford University and earned her doctorate from Rockefeller University. She was an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn.

Doris Hochstadter Haas, M.P.H., 82, of Solana Beach, California, (formerly of West Hartford, Connecticut), died in January after a brief illness.

She received a Masters of Public Health from CSPH in 1937, and served as assistant supervisor of Health Education for the State of Connecticut following graduation. in Connecticut she was active in Planned Parenthood, the Hartford Tuberculosis and Public Health Society, and the West Hartford Public Schools. She served on numerous state health committees and was a delegate to the 1960 White House Conference on Children and Youth.

Henry Eugene Manning, an early framer of New York City’s Health and Hospitals Corporation, died last December in Cleveland.

He earned a master’s degree in hospital administration from CSPH in 1962.
as Deputy Commissioner in the city’s Department of Hospitals, he oversaw the task force that drew up guidelines for the Health and Hospitals Corporation, which was formally created on July 1, 1970.

In Ohio, Manning spent 23 years as president and chief operating officer of Metrohealth Medical Center, Cleveland’s public hospital.

Addendum

We are reminded by Columbia Public Health reader Peter Barton Hutt that Morris Schaffer, M.D., [Spring 1997 obituaries, p. 39] supervised a major program for the Food and Drug Administration. Under the Biologic Act of 1902, the Public Health Service licensed numerous biological products for marketing. When this function was transferred in 1972 to the FDA, it established six advisory committees to conduct a review of the safety, effectiveness, and labeling for all biologic products licensed in the previous seventy years. Schaffer directed the review well into his retirement years.