With Mr. Thomas’s blessing and the board’s support, Dr. Pinkel hired the best researchers and doctors he could find, attracting them with his bold vision and St. Jude’s progressive culture. His wife, Marita (Donovan) Pinkel, would help by hosting recruits at their house and lobbying them over dinner.
That marriage ended in divorce. Along with his son John, Dr. Pinkel is survived by his second wife, Cathryn Howarth; six daughters, Rebecca Amthor, Nancy Pinkel, Mary Pinkel, Noelle Greene, Sara Pinkel and Ruth Pinkel; two sons, Thomas and Michael; his sister, Eileen Pinkel; 16 grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. Another son, Christopher, died before him.
Dr. Pinkel and his team found early success with his Total Therapy approach but kept the results unpublished until the late 1960s, to ensure that the data was solid. Still, when he did publicize his findings, he was met with skepticism, even derision; other doctors said he was cruel to give patients and their families hope in the face of what everyone knew was an incurable disease.
But after he invited a few of his most prominent critics to visit the hospital, they changed their tune; one of them, Alvin Mauer of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, took over as the president of St. Jude when Dr. Pinkel left.
During their studies, Dr. Pinkel and his colleagues noticed something strange: The children from lower-income families, most of them Black, tended to have worse results than children from higher-income families. After investigating, they concluded that pervasive malnutrition was to blame.
Dr. Pinkel helped launch a program to provide families with supplemental nutrition. That effort provided the model for the federal government’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as W.I.C.
Source: NYT
