Pediatrician
HOPEWELL TOWNSHIP — Dr. Lawrence T. Taft died Wednesday. He was 84.
He was a former resident of Riverdale, N.Y., New Rochelle, N.Y. and Brookline, Mass.
A pediatrician, in 1973 he established a Department of Pediatrics and was the department’s first chairman at Rutgers Medical School in New Brunswick, now the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
Dr. Taft received the University Excellence Award “for demonstrating a high level of achievement and recognition by his peers for patient care.”
He received his medical degree in 1950 from Downstate Medical School and he trained in pediatrics at NYU-Bellevue and New York Hospital-Cornell and in pediatric neurology at Boston’s Children’s Hospital.
Dr. Taft then served as assistant professor and later full professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in the Bronx, N.Y.
Dr. Taft had been active with Beit Issie Shapiro, one of the leading child development treatment and educational services in Ra’anana, Israel. He served as chairman of the Committee on Children with Handicaps of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
A World War II veteran, he landed on Normandy 30 days after D-Day and took part in the Battle of the Bulge, receiving two Purple Hearts and three Battle Stars.
He is survived by his wife of 55 years, Odette Pois; son Richard Taft; daughters Marjorie White and Joan Kluger; and five grandchildren.
There will be a private interment and a memorial service to be announced later.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Lawrence Fund for Children or Parents Anonymous at www.parentsanonymous.org or Beit Issie Shapiro at www.beitissie.org.il/eng.
Arrangements are by Blackwell Memorial Home, Pennington.
