Kenneth Poe Funeral Services

July 2, 2022

CHARLOTTE – The right-handed world lost a good and decent left-handed man in the early morning of Saturday, July 2, 2022.  James P. Cooney, Jr., Ph.D., died at Atrium Health Mercy Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, of heart failure.  He was 88 years old. 

Dr. Cooney was a nationally-known and widely-published public health researcher, director, professor, and Dean over the course of a 40-year career.  He participated in and helped design the first hospital surveys conducted by the American Hospital Association, taking part in and ultimately helping to lead the effort to evaluate hospitals in a systematic way.  He held teaching posts at UCLA, Northwestern University, Brown University, was the Director of the Department of Health Administration at Duke University, the Dean of the School of Allied Health at the University of Kansas Medical Center, and retired as the Dean of the Allied Schools of Health at Georgia State University.  During the Carter and Reagan Administrations, he was the Associate Director of the DHHS Office of Health Statistics, Research and Technology.  He taught and mentored hundreds of students over two generations and many of his former students maintained contact with him throughout his life.  In 1991, the University of Kansas established the KU Allied Health Alumni Association James P. Cooney Leadership Award in his honor. Throughout his career he was a passionate advocate for universal access to quality medical care and, in retirement, continued that passion by volunteering at free medical clinics.

James P. Cooney, Jr., was born on November 9, 1933, at West Point, New York, the only child of Irene (Kelly) Cooney and James P. Cooney, Sr., M.D.  At the time his father was a medical officer assigned to the Corps of Cadets for the United States Military Academy, and would later rise to become Deputy Surgeon General of the Army.  Dr. Cooney grew up at various military bases and postings.  While in Panama, he attended a Catholic School where the teachers discovered that he was left-handed and forced him to use his right hand.  His mother, when she found what was going on, put a stop to it, and Dr. Cooney was a proud left-hander the rest of his life.

Dr. Cooney graduated from High School in Silver Spring, Maryland and then attended the University of Iowa, receiving Bachelor and Master’s Degrees in Science.  While there he saw and fell in love with a young woman at a student council meeting one winter night.  He and Sondra (Cooper) Cooney were married on December 1, 1956, in San Francisco, where he was an Army Lieutenant.  He was on active duty from 1956 to 1962, and was honorably discharged at the rank of Captain.  In 1967, while working at the American Hospital Association, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.  

Aside from his passion for public health work and family, Dr. Cooney was an opera lover of the highest order.  He routinely inflicted the Texaco Metropolitan Opera broadcast on his children, and bribed them to attend the opera. To keep their interest, he would provide amusing, humorous and occasionally ribald summaries of the opera over a pre-opera dinner, summaries that led to a second career after his retirement.  In an effort to make opera more accessible, he created easy to read commentaries on more than 60 operas, and gave lectures at regional opera companies and Georgia State University’s annual spring opera production.  Above all, he believed that opera expressed the essence of the human condition and its joys and sorrows in the most beautiful way possible, through the marriage of music and words.

Consistent with his left handedness and a general restlessness, Dr. Cooney was constantly engaged in crafts and creative projects, from cork Christmas trees to macramé to origami decorations. He was proud of his prize-winning golf cart decorations for Easter parades on Daufuskie Island and loved to decorate for Christmas. Family and friends drank copious amounts of wine to supply him with corks for his wreaths and trees.

He is survived by his wife of nearly 66 years, 3 children, James P. Cooney III, an attorney in Charlotte, Andrew Sean Cooney, a financial services consultant in Charlotte, and Amy Cooney Cowan, an attorney in Charlotte, daughters in law, Betsy, Lee and Anita, son in law Bill, 10 grandchildren, and 2 great-grandchildren.  A son, Christopher Kelly Cooney, an architect in Hong Kong, died in 2019.  His family took great comfort in telling him that they were all with him as his life ended, and that Chris was waiting for him.

Services will be private.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that contributions be made to any of the following:  The Des Moines Metro Opera Company, Georgia State University Opera Theater or the Aldersgate Guardian Angel Fund.

Arrangements are in the care of Kenneth W. Poe Funeral & Cremation Service, 1321 Berkeley Ave., Charlotte, NC 28204; (704) 641-7606. Online condolences may be shared at www.kennethpoeservices.com.