REMEMBERING DR. HAROLD JORDAN

REMEMBERING DR. HAROLD JORDAN

Congressional Record, Volume 171 Issue 35 (Friday, February 21, 2025) [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 35 (Friday, February 21, 2025)] [Extensions of Remarks] [Page E150] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] REMEMBERING DR. HAROLD JORDAN ______ HON. STEVE COHEN of tennessee in the house of representatives Friday, February 21, 2025 Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Dr. Harold Jordan, a pioneering medical doctor and psychiatrist in my state of Tennessee who passed in December at the age of 87. Dr. Jordan became the first Black resident physician at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 1964 and Tennessee's first Black Commissioner of Mental Health and Mental Retardation. My father, Dr. Morris Cohen, was the Superintendent of the Western State Psychiatric Hospital (now the Western Mental Health Institute) in Bolivar, Tennessee, in the mid- 1970s, and worked with Dr. Jordan. After ensuring that every mental health facility in the state was accredited, Tennessee named a building in his honor: the Harold W. Jordan Habilitation Center in Nashville in 1979. Dr. Jordan also served for 18 years as the Chairman of the Psychiatry Department at Meharry Medical College, from which he graduated in 1962. He also served as its acting dean. He won the college's President's Award and its Humanism in Clinical Medicine Award. Vanderbilt established the Harold Jordan Lecture celebrating Diversity, Inclusion and Social Justice in his honor. Born in 1937 in Newnan, Georgia, he knew by the age of seven that he would follow in the footsteps of both his father and grandfather into medicine. He graduated from Morehouse College with a degree in biology in 1958. After medical school, he married a nursing student named Geraldine, who survives him after 62 years of marriage. Family lore says they met while hiding after a bomb threat as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was preparing to speak at nearby Fisk College. Dr. Jordan and his wife raised four children in Nashville and belonged to the Clark Memorial United Methodist Church where he sang in the choir. He served as an officer in both the Tennessee National Guard and the U.S. Army Reserve. Dr. Jordan and his wife retired to Los Angeles to be nearer to their children. I extend my condolences to Dr. Jordan's family, friends and many admirers. He made a profound difference in our state and his compassion, patient care and mentoring of future doctors will be long remembered. ____________________