John M. Templeton Jr., 75, pediatric surgeon at Children's Hospital

WORKING WITH the cantankerous C. Everett Koop had to have been a challenge. But Jack Templeton was up to it.

The two doctors shared a simple philosophy: No case, however desperate, however seemingly impossible, was hopeless.

While the two were pediatric surgeons at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, they participated in the separation of numerous conjoined twins, some of which other surgeons considered hopeless cases.

Not as long as Koop and Templeton were on duty. No child was just going to be left to die.

Jack Templeton, who died Saturday at age 75, trained in pediatric surgery under Koop, the hospital's surgeon-in-chief, from 1973 to 1975. After a hitch as a physician in the Navy, he returned to CHOP in 1977, where he served as pediatric surgeon and director of the trauma program.

Many of the surgeries Jack performed were undertaken with his wife, the former Josephine Garguilo, called Pina, as lead anesthesiologist. They were married in 1970.

"We saw many, many things that were very difficult to handle," Pina said. "Every aspect was complex and Jack had so many difficult cases that the hospital had a dictum: When a very hard case was admitted, we would say, 'That's a Jack patient.' "

Jack performed many surgeries on conjoined twins under the direction of Koop, who became U.S. surgeon general in the Reagan administration, and his successor, Dr. James A. O'Neill Jr. Koop died in 2013 at 96.

Jack later became professor of pediatric surgery at the University of Pennsylvania. After retiring in 1995, he continued to serve as an adjunct professor at the Penn School of Medicine.

John Marks Templeton Jr., who died of cancer in his home in Bryn Mawr, was a man of many interests beyond medicine. He was president and chairman of the John Templeton Foundation, which is described as "a philanthropic catalyst for discoveries on what scientists and philosophers call the big questions of human purpose and ultimate reality."

The foundation was actually named after his father, John M. Templeton, a global investor and philanthropist who created the foundation, based in West Conshohocken, in 1987.

The foundation awards an annual prize, the Templeton Prize, now worth about $1.7 million, to "a living person who has made exceptional contributions to affirming life's spiritual dimension."

The 2015 prize went to Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche, an international network of communities where people with and without intellectual disabilities live and work together as peers. It was awarded Monday in London.

Jack Templeton took over the foundation after his father's death in 2008. It has an endowment of $3.34 billion and awards hundreds of grants to universities, scholars and charities worldwide.

But Jack's first love was always medicine.

"Jack loved medicine for many reasons," said Dr. John Schott, a medical-school classmate and former trustee of the foundation. "But one is that it teaches us to look for what is absolutely essential, and to separate the essential from the trivial.

"Jack never lost his compassion, never objectified the patient. You have to make life-and-death decisions within a short period of time and often without enough information. That's why medicine is a calling, and not just a job."

"I'll always remember him as a doctor," said his daughter Jennifer Templeton Simpson. "His being a doctor influenced everything - the way he viewed things, the way he handled problems, the way he asked a lot of questions before he said anything. He never gave up when he didn't have an answer."

Jack was born in New York City, the eldest of the three children of John Marks Templeton and the former Judith Dudley Folk. He was raised in Englewood, N.J., and spent many summers in Winchester, Tenn., where his father was born.

He attended Englewood public schools and the George School in Newtown, Pa., and received a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University in 1962. He received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School, and completed his residency in surgery at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond in 1973.

He published numerous articles in medical journals and was the author of two books, Thrift and Generosity: The Joy of Giving (2004) and an autobiography, John M. Templeton Jr.: Physician, Philanthropist, Seeker (2008).

Besides his wife and daughter, he is survived by another daughter, Heather Dill; a brother, Christopher; and six grandchildren.

Services: A visitation will be held at 5 p.m. May 27, at Chadwick and McKinney Funeral Home, 30 E. Athens Ave., Ardmore.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the American Trauma Society, PA Division, 2 Flowers Drive, Mechanicsburg, PA 17050.