Dr. Roger Mitchell, undated, from a photograph of Trudeau Sanatorium staff. (Historic Saranac Lake Collection.) Born: September 26, 1907
Died: September 1, 1993
Married: Virginia Anne Garrett
Children: Roger Mitchell Jr.; Anne Mitchell; Gary Mitchell
Dr. Roger S. Mitchell was the director of the Trudeau Sanatorium from 1953 to '55, when he left to become director of the Colorado Foundation for Research in Tuberculosis and associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
After graduation from Harvard College in 1930, and Harvard Medical School in 1934, Dr. Mitchell completed his hospital training in three Boston hospitals and then practiced internal medicine in Glens Falls from 1937 to 1942.
Dr. Mitchell was a patient at Trudeau for four months in 1942. He was a medical officer in the Army Air Force from 1942 to 1945, and then resident physician at the North Carolina Sanatorium McCain, North Carolina in 1945 and 1946. He then came to Trudeau, where he served on the staff as assistant medical director; in 1953 he was named clinical director. Starting in 1950, he was also an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Vermont College of Medicine.
Source: Adirondack Daily Enterprise, January 15, 1955
Adirondack Daily Enterprise, September 9, 1993
Dr. Roger Sherman Mitchell
DENVER, Colo. -- Dr. Roger Sherman Mitchell, 86, a former medical director at Trudeau Sanatorium, died September 1, 1993 in Denver at the South Monaco Care Center.
Born in Wayne, Penn., on Sept. 26, 1907, he attended Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard University and Harvard Medical School.
On Sept. 5, 1932 he married Virginia Anne Garrett in Haddonfield, N.J.
A medical director of Trudeau Sanatorium from 1947 to 1955, Dr. Mitchell was also the head of the chest service at the University of Colorado Medical School from 1955 to 1973, the director of Webb-Waring Lung Institute from 1955 to 1973 and the chief of staff for the Veteran's Administration Hospital from 1972-1977.
Publishing over 125 articles on respiratory diseases, Mr. [sic: Dr.] Mitchell received the American Thoracic Trudeau Medal in 1980 and the American Lung Association of Colorado Award in 1992. He was an avid skier and tennis player.
Survivors include his wife; two sons, Roger S. III of Bloomington, Ind. and R. Garrett of San Francisco, Calif.; a daughter, Anne M. Culver of Denver; a sister, Elizabeth Bach of Glens Falls; and three granddaughters.
Services were held Saturday at the Montview Presbyterian Church in Denver. Entombment followed cremation.
Memorial donations may be made to the American Lung Association of Colorado or Planned Parenthood.
Excerpt from Dr. Webb of Colorado Springs by Helen Clapesattle, 1984, p.481
"[I]n 1961 the Colorado Foundation for Research in Tuberculosis was renamed the Webb Institute for Medical Research--though still 'dedicated to study of diseases of the lungs.'
"It was flourishing. Dr. Waring was still its president but no longer its research director. When he took emeritus status at the university in 1954 and wanted to cement for the future the bond between the medical school and the Institute, he sought a man who could wear his own two hats, teaching in the medical school and directing research in the Institute.
"He was lucky. The great Trudeau Sanatorium was closing its doors that year and thus releasing its clinical director, Dr. Roger S. Mitchell, whom a colleague called "the foremost authority in the country on pulmonary diseases." A native of Pennsylvania and a graduate of the Harvard medical school, Dr. Mitchell had acquired substantial experience both in university teaching and in specialized practice. . He became head of the division of pulmonary diseases in the medical school and director of the Institute in 1955. (In 1980 he became the fifth physician from Colorado--following Henry Sewall, Gerald Webb, Florence Sabin, and James Waring--to win the Trudeau Medal.)"
