Ex-Health Director Dies at 88: Koomen Boosted Public Agencies
By Jean P. Fisher, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.
May 12–Dr. Jacob Koomen, North Carolina’s top public health official in the 1960s and 1970s, died Wednesday after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 88.
Koomen, who served as state health director between 1966 and 1978, is credited with laying the groundwork for much of the state’s modern public health infrastructure.
He was a passionate believer in immunization and pushed the state legislature to pass laws making childhood vaccinations mandatory. That paved the way for North Carolina’s child immunization program.
Koomen’s belief in the cause helped land his eldest daughter a role in a televised public health announcement that showed children receiving polio vaccinations.
Koomen also was instrumental in establishing a formal state medical examiner system, taking the business of conducting forensic autopsies out of the hands of local funeral directors and elected coroners.
“It was a time of tremendous advances in public health — he was just outstanding,” said Dr. Ronald H. Levine, who worked under Koomen and, in 1981, became state health director himself.
Dr. Sarah Morrow, a former public health director in Guilford County, said modern public health departments also owe a debt to Koomen, who pushed lawmakers for resources to increase the local departments’ quality and credibility.
“He just knew how to talk to people to get things moving,” said Morrow, who served as secretary of the state Department of Human Resources (now called the Department of Health and Human Services). Koomen reported to Morrow for one year after she assumed the Cabinet position in 1977.
Other public health work of Koomen’s has become controversial. Between 1966 and 1974, he served as a member of the state eugenics board that ordered the sterilizations of more than 7,000 North Carolinians.
His eldest daughter, Marcia Koomen, a radiologist who lives in Chapel Hill, said he rarely spoke of it. Jacob Koomen is quoted in a recent book on reproductive rights saying he was “uncomfortable” with the decisions made by the eugenics program.
“We did it because the law obligated us to,” he told Johanna Schoen, author of “Choice & Coercion.”"It isn’t something we would have volunteered to do.”
After stepping down as state health director, Koomen taught at the prestigious School of Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill until his retirement.
Koomen, the son of Dutch immigrants who settled in upstate New York after World War I, came to North Carolina in 1954 through the now-defunct U.S. Public Health Service.
The agency, which drafted doctors to serve two-year terms helping prevent the spread of communicable disease, stationed Koomen in Raleigh. He quickly determined that public health was his calling, said Marcia Koomen.
She is one of four children surviving Koomen. Others are John Koomen of Nashville, Tenn.; Nancy Della Rovere of New Jersey, and Neil Koomen of Raleigh. Jacob Koomen also had eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Koomen also is survived by his wife of more than 62 years, Ruth Koomen. The two met as students at the University of Rochester.
“They were so close,” Marcia Koomen said. “Once they started dating, there was never anybody else.”
Ruth Koomen lives at Glenaire, the Cary continuing care retirement community where her husband had been receiving nursing care since last summer. The family learned last June that cancer had spread throughout his body and that little could be done for him.
Jacob Koomen seldom spoke of death, Marcia Koomen said. In childhood, he beat a severe bone infection that doctors doubted he would survive. Then doctors said he probably would not walk, and he proved them wrong again. It was only last week that Koomen acknowledged that he was dying, Marcia Koomen said.
“He had this survivor mentality,” she said.
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