David Crockett, fund-raiser helped expand MGH
David Charless Crockett had aspired to be a surgeon like his father, but the Great Depression prevented him from going to medical school. So he chose the next best thing.
For more than 50 years he raised the money that allowed the dramatic expansion of Massachusetts General Hospital into the preeminent research center it is today.
''David was the catalyst for the funding and the energy that propelled the hospital into its modern position in biomedical research," said Dr. John Potts, former chief of the Department of Medicine at MGH and a senior staff member. ''In the early days, he helped the hospital to be the first to accept in Boston grants from the newly emerging National Institute of Health. He was responsible for helping to shape the operating rules between the NIH and academic institutions. I revered him as a great figure."
Mr. Crockett, who had a colorful career in World War II as an intelligence officer for the Office of Strategic Services, died in his sleep Wednesday in the same house in Ipswich in which he was born. He was 95.
''In raising funds for the hospital he loved, David helped shape a culture of philanthropy in this city," Allen Peckham, former vice president of development at MGH and current CEO of Partners HealthCare System Inc., said in an e-mail. ''He was always generous with his time, counsel and advice to others entering the field. He believed passionately in the cause of academic medicine and was without peer as a story teller. As he often joked, some of his stories were actually true."
What happened to change the course of Mr. Crockett's career, his son, Christopher of Ipswich, said was that his own father, Eugene A., a surgeon at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, died unexpectedly in 1932, the year Mr. Crockett graduated from Harvard. Eugene left his wife, Elizabeth; three children; and many outstanding payments from patients.
''It was during the Depression," Christopher said, ''and my grandfather was a great surgeon but not very good in collecting accounts receivable. He treated his patients whether they were able to pay or not."
The family had homes in the Back Bay and on a farm in Ipswich on the end of a beach road. ''When my grandfather died," Christopher said, ''my father had to basically save the family, though he was the youngest. His brother was in the South Seas and his sister was an aspiring novelist."
Mr. Crockett's first job out of college was as a clerk in a
After a while, Mr. Crockett got a job with Boston radio station WRUL where he remained until going to war. In a 1962 story in the Boston Herald, Mr. Crockett was said to have been rejected by the Army because of a back injury, and underwent surgery to become eligible for the draft. After getting his commission at Officers Candidate School, he was chosen to serve in the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, the forerunner of today's Central Intelligence Agency.
One of Mr. Crockett's clandestine duties as a lieutenant in the OSS, his son said, was to take gold to Lisbon because Portugal was a neutral country. There, it would be converted to Italian currency, which he would take to Italy to give to the Italian Free Army, the resistance movement fighting the Germans.
Mr. Crockett was present at the German surrender in 1945.
''Dad participated in Operation Sunrise, which was Allen Dulles's efforts to get the German Army to unconditionally surrender in northern Italy, his daughter, Susan Glessner of Ipswich, said yesterday. He was awarded the Legion of Merit for his efforts.
It was during his service in the OSS that he met a colleague, Marion Yates of New York. They were married for 50 years at the time of her death in 1996.
Mr. Crockett's association with MGH began in 1946 upon his discharge from the service. In an in-house publication, he is quoted: ''I was still in uniform. Actually, I couldn't afford to buy a new suit of clothes."
He continued to use the same briefcase in which he had carried the gold in the OSS for his MGH business papers.
MGH quickly saw the affable and bright Mr. Crockett's potential for fund-raising and gave him the post of deputy to the hospital's general director.
''His fund-raising skills and thoughtful advice to MGH leadership on a multitude of hospital matters played an important role in the shaping of the hospital's programs for many years," W. Gerald Austen, former chief of surgical services at MGH, said in an e-mail.
Mr. Crockett became a confidant of early leaders of MGH, like Walter Bauer and Edward Churchill, chiefs of medicine and surgery respectively, during the post-war expansion of the hospital, Potts said.
''Dave was the only man I ever saw who could work with a group of potential donors, exceed his target for fund-raising, and talk them into contributing to a second cause," Potts said. ''He could work a crowd like no one I've ever seen. Everyone loved him because he was so selfless in this."
''All he talked about was how to facilitate MGH as a research institution," Potts said.
Mr. Crockett kept actively involved with his other interests, serving on the board of overseers at Harvard College and on the boards of cultural groups such as the Wang Center for the Performing Arts and the Boston Opera Association.
Even after he retired, Mr. Crockett continued to attend hospital trustee meetings and meetings of the committee on research until about seven years ago, Potts said.
Mr. Crockett kept an office there into his 80s. When he couldn't drive in from Ipswich, where he and his wife had moved after he retired, the hospital would send a car for him.
While retired, Mr. Crockett kept busy on the Ipswich farm where he had spent his boyhood summers, working his vegetable and flower gardens and driving his tractor through the fields. Though he wore his old clothes farming, he still wore his signature madras bowtie.
He always took good-naturedly the kidding about his name and its likeness to the great frontiersman, Davy Crockett.
His passions remained ''sailing, a good martini, and storytelling," his daughter said. ''Dad was a raconteur. He knew everybody in Boston in the '50s and '60s," she said, ''and everyone knew him."
In addition to his son and daughter, Mr. Crockett leaves six grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held Tuesday at 3 p.m. in Ascension Memorial Church in Ipswich. Burial will be in the fall.
