Albert Frank Heck

Albert F. Heck M.D., 88, passed away peacefully December 3, 2020 in Catonsville, MD. The son of Albert Franklin Heck and Dorothy Mary Jirsa Heck, he was educated in Baltimore public schools. In 1946 he was awarded a Foundation scholarship at McDonogh School, graduating in 1950. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Johns Hopkins University in 1954 and a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Maryland in 1958. In 1957 he was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. After an internship at Mercy Hospital, he was a National Institutes of Health Fellow in Neurology at University of Maryland from 1959 to 1962. An army reservist in the 815th Tank Battalion during college, he was commissioned an officer in the Medical Service Corps and later the Medical Corps in the 457th General Hospital where Lt. Colonel William Donald Schaeffer was his Executive Officer. In 1964 he was assigned on active duty to Walter Reed Army Institute of Research where he worked on neural mechanisms in shock. He also served as attending neurologist on the "front section" (officers, dependents and the diplomatic corps) as well as Instructor in the Neurology Residency training program at Walter Reed General Hospital. Returning to the University of Maryland in 1964 as Assistant Professor of Neurology, he was appointed by Dr. R. Adams Cowley as Neurological Consultant to the Shock Trauma Center, continuing his animal research in shock and head trauma in Dr. Cowley's program. In 1965 he received a Junior Investigator Award from the National Institutes of Health. In 1965 he participated in the establishment and direction of the Stroke Clinic, the first of its kind in the United States. During 1965 to 1977 he served as Coordinator of the multidisciplinary University of Maryland Stroke Center, participating in 1973 in the design and clinical directorship of the intensive care Acute Stroke Unit, the second such unit in the country. He had been promoted to Professor of Neurology in 1972. In 1973 Dr. Heck was awarded a Humboldt Prize as a United States Senior Scientist by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of the Federal Republic of Germ any. During the year 1973-74 he was also Visiting Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Medizinische Hochschule Hannover, the medical school of Lower Saxony where he worked on the effects of brain distortion and increased intracranial pressure on heart rate, blood pressure, respiration and the microscopic blood vessels of the brain. In 1977 he was named Professor and Chairman of the Department of Neurology and Director of Neurosciences at the University of Tennessee at Memphis. After 25 years in fulltime academic medicine in October 1982 he moved to private practice in Charleston West Virginia, also serving as Clinical Professor of Neurology and Director of Neurological Education in the Charleston division of West Virginia School of Medicine and the Charleston Area Medical Center. For the next 18 years he attended the General, Memorial, Women’s and Children’s hospitals of CAMC and their free clinics and was instrumental in the development of a neurological/neurosurgical intensive care unit at the General division of CAMC. He was also a staff member at St. Francis Hospital and attending neurologist at the Muscular Dystrophy Association Clinic. Dr. Heck was a Diplomat of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology with which he was later an ad hoc examiner. He was also a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Neurology, the American Neurological Association, the American Heart Association, a founding member and Fellow of the Stroke Council and a Fellow of the American and International Colleges of Angiology, serving as Associate Editor for their journal "Angiology". He was also at times a member of the European Microcirculatory Society, the International Society of Biorheology, the Microcirculatory Society, American Society of Neuroimaging, the Maryland Society for Research, the Association of University Professors of Neurology, the Society for Neuroepidemiology, the Southern Clinical Neurological Society, the Kanawha Valley Medical Society, the West Virginia State Medical Association and the American Medical Association (Senior). He was founding member and later President of the Baltimore Neurological Society, the Association of Tennessee Neurologists and the West Virginia Neurosciences Society. Dr. Heck was elected to Best Doctors in America in 1996 until his retirement from active practice in October 2000. Upon his return to Baltimore, he was appointed by both Governor Erlich and later Governor O'Malley to the Maryland State Advisory Council on Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention, serving until 2010. From 2001 he also served as Consultant in Neurology in the Office of Disability Policy at the Social Security Administration in Baltimore. In 1956 he married Carole Ann Blomeier, their union blessed with four sons. The marriage ended in 1992. In 1999 he met Marilyn M. Shangraw, his beloved life partner from that time on. He often said that the things he missed most in retirement were his patients and the students and resident physicians in training who he had taught for over 40 years. He is survived by his sons Dr. Albert W. Heck of Camp Hill, PA, Karl A. Heck of West Lawn PA, Robert C. Heck of Cockeysville, MD and Lt. Colonel Paul C. Heck of Blythewood, SC, seven grandchildren, a great-granddaughter, and by Carole Ann Heck and Marilyn M. Shangraw.