Robert W. Coon, shown here on June 7, 1982, was the first dean of the Marshall Medical School.
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Robert W. Coon, the first dean of the Marshall Medical School has passed away. He was 96.
Coon, who passed away Saturday, retired in 1989 to Burlington, Vermont, where he has family.
Marshall University president emeritus Robert B. Hayes, who served as Marshall University president from 1974 to 1983 and who is the author of the 2006 book “$7,000 in the Bank … the Remarkable Story of Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, 1972-2005,” said Sunday morning that Coon was one of the six linchpins credited with birthing Marshall’s med school. He was the last one living.
Hayes said there would be no med school at Marshall without the late Gov. Arch Moore, local physician Dr. Albert C. Esposito, two powerful U.S. Senators Jennings Randolph and Robert C. Byrd (also a Board of Regents member), attorney Ed Greene and Coon.
“He was an outstanding man all the way through…