Riley, Robert H. (Dr.)

Passed: 1967-01-25

Age: 87

Source: Jackson Herald

Death Notice:

Obituary Date: 1967-02-03

Information: ROBERT RILEY, NOTED LEADER PUBLIC HEALTH FIELD, DEAD - Dr. Robert H. Riley, the Jackson county farm boy who rose to become internationally known in the field of Public Health, is dead.  He was 87 years old.  He died in Baltimore where he had lived since he retired as Director of the Maryland Health Department in 1956 after 41 years' service. He had been Director Emeritus of the Department since his retirement.      In 1934--after a campaign in which Dr. Riley spoke in every county in the State--Maryland became the first state in the country to have a strong, local-based public health unit in each county.  Under Dr. Riley's leadership, Maryland also became the first state to establish a medical care program for the indigent.  That program was supplemented last year by the Federal Medicaid program.  Dr. Riley also helped Maryland to develop one of the first extensive chronic illness programs.  LOG CABIN BIRTH - Born in a log cabin on a farm near Ripley, he held jobs as a school teacher, country newspaperman, assistant postmaster and bank teller.  He earned his B.S. and M. D. degrees from the University of Oklahoma.  While in Oklahoma, he worked at the State health department, where he became assistant State health officer.  He resigned in 1914, however, to take courses in bacteriology and pathology at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution.  At the Hopkins, Dr. William H. Welch, then president of the State Board of Health, persuaded him to start a public health career in Maryland. Dr. Riley's first assignment as deputy state health officer was to visit every home in areas of Dorchester county to teach people rudiments of sanitation. In 1920, he was apointed chief of the department's bureau of communicable diseases, and five years later, became assistant director of the department.  In 1928 he was appointed to the directorship and also became a faculty member of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.  Dr. Riley served on numerous commissions concerned with medicine, State planning, public health, nursing, hospital construction, and workmen's compensation.  From 1937-38, he was president of the Conference of State and Provincial Authorities of North America.  He was a past president of the Baltimore County Medical Society, and chairman of the Maryland Board of Physical Therpist Examiners, the Maryland Post Mortem Examiners and the United States Surgeon General's Committee on Venereal Disease.  He was also active in several honorary fraternities and societies, and in the American Public Health Association and the American Medical Association.  In 1953, Dr. Riley received the Arthur T. McCormack Award of the National State and Territorial Health officers Association.  He was cited for being ""a guide for health officers throughout the country in planning the organization and administration and medical services which have strengthened the total program of public health.""   Dr. Riley and his wife, the former Marion Waters, lived at 100 Beechwood avenue, Catonsville.  Besides his wife, he is survived by a son, Robert H. Riley, Jr. of Baltimore;  a daughter, Mrs. Barbara R. Gaines of Baltimore; and four sisters, Mrs. Greek Fleming, Cassville, W. Va., Mrs. George Langford of College Park, Md., Mrs. Alma Burton of St. Petersburg, Fla., and Miss Mae Riley of Washington.  Services were held Saturday at Easton funeral establishment, Frederick avenue, Catonsville.