Robert H. McCarter ’38

We knew Bob McCarter's quality early on. In 1958 he was the second winner of our Class Distinguished Service Award for having, among other things, "made possible the development of a modern program for the teaching of Harvard Medical School students, the training of resi

dents, and the teaching of graduate students in ancillary professions."

Bob majored in biology and earned a medical degree from Jefferson Medical College. His specialty was neurology, but, inspired by Freud, he studied psychiatry at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center and Harvard Medical School. He was on the Harvard faculty for 48 years and became director of the Mental Health Center's Southard Clinic.

The father of six, he was fascinated by parental interaction with the growing child and in 1963 sought further training in child psychoanalysis. He then became director of the Diagnostic and Therapeutic Nursery Unit of the Judge Baker Guidance Center and senior psychiatric supervisor at Baker and at Children's Hospital Medical Center. Despite the hierarchical nature of his titles, his objective as a doctor was simple. His wife, Margarte Douglas McCarter, describes it as "an effort to determine who and what is the normal child."

Bob never lost touch with the natural world. He was a lifelong birder and herpetologist, a walker in the woods, and a supporter of efforts to preserve the environment.

He retired in 1993, and died at home, following a stroke, Aug. 16, 1997.

The Class of 1938