Yale Bulletin and Calendar

September 27, 2002|Volume 31, Number 4

Noted cancer specialist and surgeon Dr. Jack Westley Cole dies

Dr. Jack Westley Cole

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Dr. Jack Westley Cole, who had served for 20 years as a member of the Yale faculty and was a specialist in intestinal cancer, died on June 17 at the age of 81.

Dr. Cole chaired the School of Medicine's Department of Surgery from 1966 to 1974 and was director of the Division of Oncology and the Yale Comprehensive Cancer Center from 1975 to 1984. During his tenure at Yale, he established the Yale Physician Associate Program and the Comprehensive Trauma Center.

One of Dr. Cole's major areas of research and expertise was familial polyposis of the colon and rectum. He wrote numerous articles and contributed to many books on this subject.

Dr. Cole received his medical degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1944. He did his residency training at University Hospitals, Western Reserve University. He then served as captain in the Medical Corps and as chief of surgery at the 120th Station Hospital in Bayreuth, Germany, from 1945 to 1947. From 1963 to 1966 he served as professor and chair of the Department of Surgery at Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital before joining the Yale faculty.

Dr. Cole retired from the Yale faculty in 1986, and in 1991 he moved to Camden, Maine, where he was on the consulting staff of Penobscot Bay Medical Center until 1993.

Over the course of his professional career, Dr. Cole received many honors. In 1962 he participated in the effort to eradicate smallpox by joining "Operation Brother's Brother," which provided inoculations to the rural population of Liberia, Africa. In recognition of these efforts, he received a knighthood from the Liberian government. He was named a visiting professor at the University of Saigon in Vietnam, the National Taiwan University in the Republic of China, as well as at many colleges and universities in the United States.

Dr. Cole was a member of many medical societies, including the Society of University Surgeons, the American Surgical Association, the American Board of Surgery, the Halsted Society and the New England Cancer Society.

He is survived by his wife, Ruth (Kraft); three children, Dr. Deborah Cole of Ashland, Massachusetts; Dr. Douglas Cole of Rockport, Maine; and John Cole of Eugene, Oregon; and four grandchildren. He was predeceased by his daughter, Tracey Lawler, of Bethesda, Maryland.

The Department of Surgery is planning a memorial service for Dr. Cole at a later date.

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