C. Everett Koop, former surgeon general with Philly ties

EVERETT Koop had a way of annoying people.

Outspoken and controversial, he didn't care whom he offended, whether it was the president of the United States or a nutcase who wanted him fired as U.S. surgeon general because of his views on sex education and condoms.

Koop, who died Monday, in New Hampshire, at age 96, annoyed the tobacco industry and tobacco farmers by his fierce opposition to smoking, as well as former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole whom he took to task for saying that tobacco is not addictive.

He annoyed President Bill Clinton and Congress in 1995 by declaring that they were "downright hostile to health." He said that health care was run by businessmen, not doctors.

He annoyed women's groups and liberals with his opposition to abortion and homosexuality and premarital sex.

Even President Ronald Reagan may have had second thoughts about appointing Koop U.S. surgeon general in 1982, after Koop took on the unpopular cause of AIDS prevention when it was considered a disease confined to gay men and no one else seemed to care.

Koop cared. People were dying, and he wanted something done about it.

Although Koop will probably be remembered for elevating the Office of Surgeon General from years of neglect and irrelevance into a bully pulpit for numerous health issues, he probably made his greatest impact on society as a pediatrician who saved thousands of young lives, all in Philadelphia.

As chief surgeon at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia from 1946 to 1981, he is credited with saving children whose cases were considered hopeless, including conjoined twins.

He refused to hear that a child's condition was hopeless, and he proved over and over that he could save lives that other doctors had considered lost.

He operated on children, and even babies, to correct congenital defects that he said were "incompatible with life, but amenable to surgical correction."

He and his colleagues operated on 10 pairs of conjoined twins over the years. He performed the first operation at Children's Hospital on twins joined at the pelvis in 1957. The surgery was a success.

In 1977, he was faced with conjoined twins who shared a heart. He had to make the hard decision to sacrifice one baby to save the other.

"Some of the operations I performed had never been done before," he once said. "It was an exuberant feeling, but also a little scary."

Koop, who was a vice admiral in the Public Health Service and wore his uniform while surgeon general, had the look of a biblical prophet or an old-time sea captain, with his beard and bushy eyebrows.

Even though he was born and raised in Brooklyn, his ties to Philadelphia were such that he commented during the 250th birthday celebration of Pennsylvania Hospital, in 2001, "I never really left Philadelphia."

"I moved from place to place," he said, "and stayed in Philadelphia for 40 years."

Last March, he and his second wife, Cora Hogue Koop, came to the city to see a play about conjoined twins written by former Inquirer medical writer Donald Drake.

The play, "Choice," at the Painted Bride Art Center, was based on the case in which Koop was faced with saving one baby by sacrificing the other.

After the performance, Koop talked about his own case.

Knowing that one of the twins in his care would have to die, he said that he had consulted rabbis, including one whose son Koop had operated on, to consider the morality of causing a death.

"When I tied off one carotid artery and killed a child," Koop said, "I'd given no thought about what would happen to the body. I had one dead baby and one live baby; I separated them. One of the nurses took the child who was now dead and carried it to the door of the operating room. The door opened and there stood the rabbi.

"The fact that he was there seemed almost like God's blessing on what I had done."

Koop was a devout Presbyterian and Christian conservative. But when it came to saving lives, he was willing to buck fellow conservatives who were opposed to his stand on condoms and sex education in schools, possibly as early as third grade, to prevent the spread of AIDS.

Charles Everett Koop, called "Chick," for "chicken coop," by friends, received his bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College in 1937, and his medical degree from Cornell Medical College in 1941. In the '40s and '50s, he was a professor of pediatric surgery at the University School of Medicine.

While in Philadelphia, he lived in Gladwyne with his first wife, Elizabeth, who died in 2007.

Koop and his family were devastated by the death of his son David, who was killed in a rock- climbing accident on Cannon Mountain, in New Hampshire, in 1968.

Koop, who lived in Hanover, N.H., had two other sons, Allen and Norman, and a daughter, Elizabeth.

Services: Were being arranged.