John L. Binder, M.P.H. ’85, a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, died on September 7 following a battle with cancer. He was 49. A resident of Yorktown, Va., Binder served 21 years in the Air Force, most recently as chief of the Expeditionary Medical Operations Division, Headquarters Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Va. His duties included directing functions for medical readiness operations, providing medical forces and support to planners throughout the world. His career took him all over the world and he served in Korea, Turkey, Germany, Hawaii and the continental United States. As an executive officer at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, Binder was instrumental in the November 1991 repatriation of Terry Waite and Thomas Sutherland, who had been hostages in Beirut in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Colonel Binder recently received the Legion of Merit Medal signifying meritorious and distinguished service.

Charles R. Cavanagh Jr., M.D. ’47, died on May 6 In Spokane, Wash. He was 83. Cavanagh served in the Navy Reserve while in medical school and in the Air Force, where he was chief of surgery at Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington. After his military service he formed the Spokane Surgical Group.

William L. Donegan, M.D. ’59, died on July 17. He was 73. An academic and athletic standout in high school in Florida, Donegan earned scholarships to Exeter Academy, Yale University and the School of Medicine. He completed his residency at Barnes Hospital-Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. At Ellis Fischel State Cancer Hospital in Columbia, Mo., he developed his expertise in surgical oncology. In 1974 he joined the faculty of the Medical College of Wisconsin, where he spent the next 29 years.

Richard K. Friedlander, M.D. ’47, died on June 3 in Geyersville, Calif. He was 82. After serving as house physician at the American Hospital in Paris, Friedlander went to San Francisco to train as a psychiatrist at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He also worked in emergency psychiatric services at San Francisco General Hospital and the student health service at UCSF. He retired in 1983.

Howard H. “Howdy” Groskloss, M.D. ’35, died on July 15 at VNA Hospice House in Vero Beach, Fla. He was 100. While at the School of Medicine, Groskloss also played professional baseball for the Pittsburgh Pirates, from 1930 to 1932. He practiced gynecology for more than 25 years and during World War II he was a Navy flight surgeon.

Terry L. Hatmaker, M.P.H. ’74, died on July 30 in High Point, N.C. He was 59. Born in LaFollette, Tenn., Hatmaker grew up in Oregon. He worked at the Center for Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, helping to develop an LCA system for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to assist in making decisions about decontamination at various DOE sites. The LCA system is intended to minimize risks to human health and added insults to the environment.

Jay G. Hayden II, M.D. ’66, died on May 20 after a struggle with pulmonary fibrosis. He was 66. An anesthesiologist, Hayden served in the U.S. Air Force at Andrews Air Force Base, then worked at the Lahey Clinic in Massachusetts. In 1982 he moved to Maine and worked at the Maine Medical Center’s Spectrum Medical Group.

Gueh-Djen (Edith) Hsiung, Ph.D., an internationally recognized virologist and professor emeritus in the Department of Laboratory Medicine, died of cancer on August 20, at Connecticut Hospice in Branford. She was 87. Hsiung was a pioneer in the field of diagnostic virology and known for the techniques she invented to detect and characterize viruses. She authored a landmark textbook, established laboratories and trained generations of new professionals in the field, even into her early 80s. She was also known for her development of animal models to study the pathogenesis and treatment of viral infections. Hsiung was born in Hupei, China, and graduated with a degree in biology from Ginling College in Chengdu in 1942. During World War II she tested bacterial and viral vaccines for use in animals at the Ministry of Public Health in Lanzhou. After the war, she came to the United States and obtained her doctorate in microbiology from Michigan State University in 1951. She applied for admission to medical school at Yale but was told she was too old. Instead she was offered a postdoctoral fellowship in 1953, working under Joseph L. Melnick, Ph.D. ’39, on poliovirus and related enteroviruses. She joined the faculty the next year and, aside from a two-year sojourn at New York University, spent her entire professional career at Yale.

John K. Joe, M.D., HS ’00, assistant professor of otolaryngology, died suddenly on August 8. He was 36. Joe came to Yale in 1995 as an intern in the Department of Surgery and completed his residency in otolaryngology in 2000. After a fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and an assistant professorship at the Medical University of South Carolina, Joe returned to Yale in 2003 to join the faculty of the Section of Otolaryngology in the Department of Surgery. He rapidly established himself as a premier head and neck surgeon and developed one of the largest head and neck surgical oncology practices on the East Coast. He specialized in treating patients with advanced and complex cancers and offered the highest level of technical and compassionate care.

Frederick F. Krauskopf, M.D. ’44, died on August 7 in Florida. He was 87. Born in Germany, Krauskopf came to the United States when he was 5. After a residency at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, he served in a U.S. Medical Corps M.A.S.H. unit in Korea. He subsequently served as chief of surgery at Fort McClellan, Ala., and at the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington. He also served as chief of surgery and deputy commander of the Medical Center of the European Theater in Landstuhl, Germany. After serving as chief of surgery at Martin Army Hospital at Fort Benning, he retired to private practice in Stuart, Fla.

Victor A. Machcinski Sr., M.D. ’47, died of cancer in West Chatham, Mass., on May 11. He was 82. Machcinski interned at Grace-New Haven Community Hospital and completed a surgical residency at New Britain Hospital. He served in Korea with the U.S. Army Medical Corps and was awarded the Bronze Star. A fellow of the American College of Surgeons, he practiced at Danbury Hospital for 31 years.

Ralph G. Maurer, M.D. ’67, died on May 12. He was 62. Maurer served as a major in the Medical Corps, U.S. Air Force Reserve, at the School of Aerospace Medicine in San Antonio. For the last 26 years he was on the faculty at the University of Florida College of Medicine, where he was an associate professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Autism and Related Disabilities.

Iwao M. Moriyama, M.P.H. ’34, Ph.D. ’37, died on June 10 in Cheverly, Md., of complications from injuries sustained in a fall. He was 97. In 1940 Moriyama joined the U.S. Public Health Service in Washington, where he worked for more than 30 years. He served on the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics and the World Health Organization’s Expert Panel on Health Statistics. During his retirement he spent three years studying health risks from radiation exposure in Hiroshima, Japan.

Richard M. Peters, M.D. ’45, died of metastatic melanoma on September 1 at his home in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 84. Peters was born in New Haven, the son of John P. Peters, M.D., a distinguished professor of medicine at the School of Medicine. After graduating, Peters served as a medical officer in the Army, and in 1952 he became assistant professor of surgery and head of cardiothoracic surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1954 he was instrumental in opening the first intensive care unit in the United States for postsurgical patients at North Carolina Memorial Hospital. Eight months later it became the first desegregated ward in the hospital, a precedent that led to the eventual desegregation of the entire hospital. In 1963 Peters’ research on pulmonary mechanics led him to recognize the need to use computer and physiology methodologies to collect and analyze pulmonary mechanics and work done on the lungs. He also established a postgraduate curriculum in bioengineering, one of the first of its kind in the country. In 1961 he was elected to the Chapel Hill School Board and was instrumental in desegregating the city’s public schools, making it the first totally desegregated school system in the South. In 1969, Peters became head of the division of cardiothoracic surgery and bioengineering at the new University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine. Throughout his career, Peters was very interested in the teaching of medical students, residents and fellows. He served as head of the examination committee for the American Board of Thoracic Surgery and developed the automated system for construction of the written examination. He published 250 articles and a book on respiratory mechanics; was senior editor of five textbooks, including a comprehensive text on cardiothoracic surgery published in China; and was a contributing author to books on pulmonary mechanics, fluid management and thoracic surgery.

Hannah C. Russell, R.N., M.P.H. ’60, died on September 13 in Avon, Conn. She was 95. Russell worked as an operating room nurse at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York. She also worked at the Visiting Nurse Association in New Haven. She was an assistant professor of nursing at the University of Bridgeport and a Red Cross instructor during World War II. She was on the Planning and Zoning Commission in Orange, Conn., and served as a state representative in the Connecticut legislature.

Bradford Simmons, M.D. ’39, died on July 13 at Marin General Hospital in California. He was 94. An athlete, Simmons played football, rowed crew and was a heavyweight boxer. During World War II he was a Navy flight surgeon, and after the war he practiced at Southern Pacific Hospital, Marin General Hospital and San Quentin Prison. After retiring he served on the ship Hope in Brazil, at a Quaker hospital in Kenya, at a hospital in Samoa and on the Navajo Indian Reservation at Shiprock, N.M.

Charles A. Slanetz Jr., M.D. ’57, died on June 12 in Locust Valley, N.Y. For 41 years Slanetz practiced general surgery in Glen Cove, N.Y. He also had staff positions at North Shore Hospital and at the University Hospital at Stony Brook, N.Y. His research on colon cancer was published in several journals.

Lester J. Wallman, M.D. ’38, died on July 23 in Burlington, Vt., where he lived and practiced medicine since 1947. Wallman was born in New York City and received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Yale. He trained in pathology in Sweden, in general surgery in Delaware and in neurology and neurosurgery in Connecticut. After leaving the U.S. Army in 1946 as a captain, Wallman completed his neurosurgery training in Vermont. He joined the faculty of the University of Vermont in 1948. Wallman was named professor emeritus in 1992. He wrote a chapter in the university’s bicentennial history and established the Beaumont Medical History Lecture Series. He also served as chair of the Vermont State Board of Health and on many civic boards, including that of the Vermont chapter of the American Red Cross.

Paul B. Beeson, M.D., and Robert G. Petersdorf, M.D. ’52, HS ’58, are remembered in Infectious disease, internal medicine and Paul Beeson.


Send obituary notices to Claire M. Bessinger, Yale Medicine Publications, 300 George Street, Suite 773, New Haven, CT 06511, or via e-mail to claire.bessinger@yale.edu