Sheldon Baddock (1936-1981)
Sheldon Baddock was first and foremost a scholar. At his demanding secondary school, City College, in Baltimore, where he grew up, he was class valedictorian and editor of the school newspaper. He graduated magna cum laude from Amherst and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi. But he also possessed an enormous smile and a ready wit. He tolerated the Morrow pranks of sometimes less dedicated classmates with an easy grace. Formidably active in many aspects of college life, he served on the Student Council, was elected to Sphinx and Scarab, and was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon.
Following graduation in 1962 from Harvard Medical School, Sheldon did his internship and residency at Massachusetts General in Boston. In 1964 he was made a teaching fellow in pathology at Harvard, a post he held for several years before serving in the Army Medical Corps. For nearly 15 years he was associated with Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York as a consulting diagnostician and taught clinical pathology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He was also chief of surgical pathology and medical director of the blood bank at the Bronx Veterans Administration Hospital. His special field was hematology.
During this time he developed a serious interest in collecting rare Chinese blue and white porcelain. In 1978 he was in communication with Professor Frank Trapp about a gift of oriental art he planned to make to the Mead Art Museum. These discussions, unfortunately, never reached virus. As pathology
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was his field, Sheldon researched his own situation and traveled the world to consult with experts. Despite his efforts, no diagnosis was ever made. He was in excellent spirits in the summer of 1981, and danced every dance at his sister’s son’s wedding. But he then weakened and died in November.
Sheldon never married, but his nephew and brother-in-law are both physicians. His sister, Judith Suskin, recalled in 2007, “I often think of what he could have given to the world had he lived.” Sheldon Stuart Baddock died Nov. 1, 1981.