Dr. Richard N. Stauffer, Chairman and Director of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, died of pneumonia on February 27, 1998, at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was fifty-nine years old and lived in Garrison, Maryland.
Dick Stauffer was born in Kearney, Nebraska, in 1938 and was raised in Hastings, Nebraska. He received a bachelor's degree from Hastings College in 1959 and a medical degree from Northwestern University School of Medicine in Chicago in 1963. He completed an internship in surgery at Wesley Memorial Hospital in Chicago and a residency in orthopaedic surgery at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota. From 1965 to 1967, in the middle of his residency, he served in the United States Navy.
Dr. Stauffer joined the faculty of the University of Iowa as an Assistant Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery in 1970. Two years later, he began a nineteen-year tenure at the Mayo Medical School and Clinic, advancing from Instructor of Orthopaedic Surgery to Full Professor.
From 1991 until the time of his death, Dr. Stauffer served as the Robert A. Robinson Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and as Orthopaedic Surgeon-in-Chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was a Trustee of the hospital and served as Chairman of its medical staff. He also served on many committees, including the Executive Committee for Surgery and the Reengineering Steering Committee, and he was instrumental in working with his colleagues to reorganize the governance of the Clinical Practice Association of the School of Medicine.
He was considered an international authority on the biomechanics of total joint replacement, joint motion and forces associated with walking, and the evaluation of patients who had had total joint replacement. His contributions to the clinical and research aspects of hip disease were recognized by his peers in the Hip Society, who gave him the John Charnley Award for outstanding research in 1998.
In addition to his other honors, Dr. Stauffer was an American-British-Canadian Traveling Fellow in 1978. He remained very interested in international orthopaedic affairs. He served on the Board of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and on its Committee on Research from 1981 to 1987. He also served as President of the Orthopaedic Research Society and on the Executive Committee of the American Orthopaedic Association.
He served on the editorial boards of Archives of Surgery and the Journal of Arthroplasty, and he was Editor-in-Chief of the Atlas of Orthopaedic Surgical Exposure and Advances in Operative Orthopaedics. He also chaired an advisory panel to the United States Food and Drug Administration.
Dick was, first and foremost, a dedicated family man with a very close-knit family. He enjoyed nothing more than attending gatherings at the recently created family compound in Idaho, where he could do a little fishing with his sons. His interests were varied; he was an excellent wood-carver and painter. He was interested in classic automobiles and had recently begun taking lessons in classical guitar. He was truly a multifaceted man. He weighed his words carefully and made decisive decisions. He will be sorely missed by his orthopaedic colleagues at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere; our memories of him are extremely fond ones.
Dr. Stauffer is survived by his wife, Kathleen; a daughter, Betsy, of San Francisco; two sons, Peter, of Farmington, Minnesota, and Joseph, of Bloomington, Minnesota; his mother, Joan, of Hastings; a brother, Daniel, of San Francisco; and a grandchild, Mackenzie.
J. P. K