Jerome A. "Doc" Lackner, MD, JD

Dr. Jerome A. Lackner, a physician and social activist who served as state health director under former Gov. Jerry Brown, died Friday of congestive heart failure, according to an announcement by the state Department of Health Services. He was 83.

Renowned as a medical expert on drug and alcohol addiction, Dr. Lackner specialized in treating substance abusers at his Sacramento clinic. He chose to forgo a traditional practice as an internist in favor of helping hard-core drunks and drug abusers with a tough but compassionate manner based on the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous.

He reached out to treat indigent and underserved people for free. He shunned managed care, which he said encouraged substandard treatment, and often struggled to keep his practice afloat. Financial pressures forced him to quit in 1997 and go to work at a Vacaville state prison until supporters raised money to reopen his midtown clinic.

"I consider myself an instrument. I treat, and God heals," he told The Bee in 1995. "And I can't tell you what a feeling I get when I see patients who have been in absolute despair get their 30-day chips for staying sober, or their two-year chips or their four-year chips."

Dr. Lackner's practice was influenced by his lifelong support for social justice. He was personal physician to farm labor leader Cesar Chavez and medical director for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s pivotal civil rights march in Alabama in 1965. He received many honors for his public contributions, including the John F. Kennedy Human Rights Award.

Appointed state health director in 1975, he ignited controversy with a call for decriminalizing heroin because a treatment drug, methadone, was more addictive. His department was wracked by scandals not of his making, and he ran afoul of Brown by decertifying state hospitals for shoddy practices, jeopardizing millions of dollars in federal aid. He was fired in 1978.

"I never was an administrator," he told The Bee.

Jerome Arnold Lackner was born in 1927 and reared in Santa Clara. At age 4 he accompanied his father, a San Jose physician, on medical rounds at state hospitals and psychiatric wards.

He graduated from Santa Clara University and received a master's degree in sociology at UC Berkeley. He earned a medical degree at the University of Southern California and a law degree at Santa Clara.

He lectured in law and medicine at Santa Clara from 1973 to 1985 and was associate clinical professor at the UC Davis School of Medicine from 1979 to 1989. He was honored by Kaiser Foundation Hospitals for teaching and by the Sacramento-El Dorado Medical Society for exemplary patient treatment.

A longtime Davis resident, Dr. Lackner had five children during his marriage to Yetta Lippman. Following a divorce, he remarried. 

Born: Apr 17, 1927 in San Jose, CA, USA

Died: Jul 09, 2010 in Davis, CA, USA

Obituary

Jerome Lackner, a doctor, lawyer, and passionate social activist known for his connections to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez, died Friday in Davis, Calif., of congestive heart failure. He was 82.

Lackner spent the last several months of his life in the Santa Cruz area, where four of his children live. He spent his life fighting to provide care and support to those who most needed it, a mission that resulted in his founding the United Farm Workers Union clinic in Salinas, Calif., and in his involvement with numerous struggles for farmworker rights, friends and colleagues said.

"Doc loved a good fight," said Don Gomez, a close friend for 36 years. "He fought for prisoners, alcoholics, addicts, farmworkers - whomever nobody else liked, Doc took special care of."

He was perhaps best known as personal physician to King during the civil rights march from Selma, Ala., to Birmingham in 1965, and for giving health advice to farmworker-advocate Cesar Chavez during his hunger strikes.

During his years at University of Santa Clara and the University of California Berkeley, Lackner studied psychology, sociology, anthropology and social institutions. His education put him on a path of activism and social justice, said friends.

Lackner served as head of the California Department of Health Services under former Gov. Jerry Brown. Lackner used his vast knowledge on addiction and alcoholism to found the William D. Silkworth Fund for the advanced study and treatment of addictive disorders.

"Doc was not about blame," Gomez said. "Doc was about, 'Where do we go from here?'"

The last months of his life were frustrating for Lackner, Gomez said. The independence and tirelessness that had propelled him his entire lifetime faltered along with his health, and he was forced to use a walker or a wheelchair to get around.

That dimmed neither his spirits nor his intellect, however, and according to daughter Johanna Lackner-Marx, he would jokingly insist he was "fine from the neck up."

Lackner raised five children with his first wife, Dr. Yetta Lippman, and instilled in each of them a need to "heal the world," Lackner-Marx said.

Dr. Lackner was buried at The Davis Cemetery, 820 Pole Line Rd. Davis, CA 95618
on Tuesday, July 13, 2010, in the presence of his family and friends.  Long-time friend Don Gomez and daughter Johanna Lackner Marx gave the eulogies.

A celebration of the life of Dr. Jerome Lackner, will be held on Saturday, July 17, 2010  from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. at the Knights of Columbus Hall, 5961 Newman Ct., Sacramento, CA 95819. It will be a potluck event. Friends of the ''Doc'' are asked to bring a dish, soft drinks, stories, or pictures. Please join us to give the ''Doc'' a proper send off. For information, please call (510) 685-4604 or (916) 706-7632