David Rogers, MD Papers

David Rogers, MD was born on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1926, in New York City. After his father, Carl Rogers, renowned psychologist, finished his graduate work at Teacher's College, Columbia University, the family moved to Rochester, NY where Dr. Rogers grew up. He had one sister, Natalie, a psychologist. He attended Haley School, a private college prep school in Rochester, NY. In 1939, the family moved to Columbus, Ohio where his father was a psychology professor at Ohio State University. Dr. Rogers attended Ohio State University High School, an experimental school. At the dawn of WWII, Dr. Rogers decided to skip his last year of high school and enter college. He met his first wife, Corajane (Corky) when in high school in Columbus, OH. (She attended a different school). From 1942-1944, he attended Ohio State University and briefly Miami University in Oxford, OH. At the age of 18, he joined the Navy V-12 program and was admitted to Cornell University Medical College, where he graduated in 1948. He married his first wife in August 1946, and together they had three children: Anne, Gregory, and Julia.

After college, he began his residency at Johns Hopkins (Osler Service). In 1950, he returned to NYH-CMC as a United States Public Health Service postdoctoral fellow and resident with the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases. His mentors here were Drs. David Barr and Walsh McDermott, with whom he developed a lifelong friendship. He was the chief resident for the Department of Medicine from 1951-1952. He served with the Naval Reserve from 1944-1954 and spent two years in active duty with the Navy. In 1954, he received an appointment as visiting investigator at Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research where he worked with Rene Dubos on staph. infections research. At the same time, he returned to NYH-CMC, where he rose to chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine in 1955.

From 1959-1968, he was the chairman/professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Hospital. He is credited with building the Department of Medicine at that hospital. In 1968, he decided to accept the deanship at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He was also vice president (medicine) of Johns Hopkins University and the medical director at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He did not like being a dean and only stayed three years. One thing that he was interested in at Johns Hopkins was the development of two medical care systems for Columbus, MD and East Baltimore, MD. He divorced his first wife while at Johns Hopkins. In 1972, he married his longtime colleague, Barbara (Bobbie) Lehan.

In 1972, he was approached by the board of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to serve as its first president. The Foundation, which was the second wealthiest after the Ford Foundation in the nation, purpose was to "contribute to the advancement of health care in the United States." After serving the Foundation for 14 years, Dr. Rogers desired to return to academia. In 1986, he accepted the Walsh McDermott University Distinguished Professor of Medicine at CUMC.

Dr. Rogers had an active professional schedule with numerous lectures and committee meeting engagements. He was on the committees of several organizations including the New York State AIDS Advisory Council, the National Commission on AIDS (appointed by President George H. W. Bush), and New York Academy of Medicine. He enjoyed writing and published 256 articles on a variety of topics including, staph infections, medical education, health care reform, and AIDS.

He died on December 5, 1994.