Dr. Rowland L. Mindlin, whose career in pediatrics, public health and education spanned nearly half a century, died May 3 at his home in Haverford, Pa. He was 95 years old.
In his 50th year, Dr. Mindlin gave up a successful private pediatric practice in suburban Westchester County, N.Y., to devote his energies to improving the quality of public maternal and child health services, especially in economically depressed urban areas. Over the next 25 years, he served in New York, Boston and Chicago, first as assistant health commissioner for maternal and child health in New York City (1962-67), then as director of maternal and child health for Boston (1970-74), and in administrative posts at St. Mary’s Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y. (1974-78), and the Mile Square Health Center in Chicago (1978-86). He also held faculty positions in pediatrics and community health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and the Rush Medical College in Chicago.
Dr. Mindlin was born January 30, 1912, in New York, the third of four children of Henry Mindlin, a Manhattan businessman. His brother Raymond D. Mindlin was a well-known professor of civil engineering at Columbia University whose research made seminal contributions to applied mechanics, applied physics, and engineering science; his brother Eugene S. Mindlin was a prominent builder and real estate developer who helped create the shopping mall. The Mindlin Award at Columbia University, given annually to an outstanding graduate student, honors the achievements of all three brothers in research and practice.
Dr. Mindlin received his BA (cum laude) from Harvard University in 1933 and his MD in pediatrics from Harvard Medical School in 1937. During his residency in Boston, he met a nurse, Freda Kleiman, of Lynn, Mass.; they were married in 1940.
During the second World War, Dr. Mindlin was an Air Force major in England, serving as flight surgeon for the 393rd and 94th Bomb Groups.
After the war, Dr. Mindlin returned to the New York area where he established a private pediatric practice in White Plains. In addition, he held hospital appointments at the New York Hospital, Lincoln Hospital and White Plains Hospital, and teaching appointments at Cornell and Einstein Medical Schools. His wife, Freda, became a psychiatric social worker. They had two sons, Henry and Frederic, and lived in Scarsdale.
In 1961, Dr. Mindlin gave up his practice and returned to Harvard for a master’s degree in public health, awarded in 1962. (A mid-life career change of that kind, though common today, was startling at that time.) He then joined the New York City Health Department, first as Bureau Director for Child Health, then as Assistant Commissioner for Maternal and Child Health, overseeing the health of the 160,000 babies born in New York City each year. In 1967, he became the director for Children and Youth Projects for the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In 1970, Dr. Mindlin accepted the position of director of maternal and child health for the city of Boston, and also served as a lecturer in his field at the Harvard School of Public Health.
He returned to New York in 1974 to become Director of Ambulatory Services at St. Mary’s Hospital in Brooklyn, which served many poor and uninsured patients in the Bedford-Stuyvesant community. He also joined the faculty of the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center as a lecturer in environmental medicine and community health. Late that year, his wife, Freda, passed away after a long illness.
In 1976, Dr. Mindlin married Sylvia Brendler of New York, a floral designer whose stepfather was co-founder of the Simon and Shuster publishing company. In 1978, the couple moved to Chicago where Dr. Mindlin was named vice president of professional affairs at the Mile Square Health Center, associated with the University of Illinois. Like St. Mary’s, Mile Square serves an economically challenged urban community, the Near West Side of Chicago, and Dr. Mindlin developed and strengthened outreach programs for prenatal and perinatal care in the community. He also served as a visiting professor at the nearby Rush Medical College of Rush University.
Dr. Mindlin retired in 1986, first to Longboat Key, Florida, and then to the Quadrangle retirement community in Haverford, Pa. He continued to consult with colleagues around the country on pediatric and public health issues until his passing. He was actively associated with APHA, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association.
Dr. Mindlin is survived by his sister, Rosalind Elbaum of San Francisco, his sons Henry S. Mindlin, of Walnut Creek, California, and Frederic R. Mindlin, of Stamford Connecticut, his step-son, John Brendler of Swarthmore, Pa., two grandchildren and four step-grandchildren.