Stanley Kerr

Stanley Elphinstone Kerr (March 30, 1894 – December 14, 1976) was an American humanitarian, clinical biochemist and educator.^[1]

Life and career

A clinical biochemist at Walter Reed Hospital, he left the United States in 1919 to serve as a volunteer for Near East Relief. He began his service in Aleppo during an Armenian refugee crisis when many of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide had escaped.^[2] He worked as a medical and sanitary officer. He also worked to recover Armenian children from the Kurdish and Turkoman families into which they had been forced. He published The Lions of Marash that describe his work there.

In 1921 Stanley and his wife, Elsa Reckman Kerr, joined the staff of a Near East Relief orphanage for Armenian children at Nahr Ibrahim, Lebanon. The orphanage was abandoned in 1923 due to a typhoid outbreak.

After Stanley earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, he and Elsa returned to the Middle East where he accepted the position of chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at the American University of Beirut. Elsa Kerr also served on the AUB faculty as Dean of Women students. They had four children: Marion, Dorothy, Douglas, and Malcolm H. Kerr.

In 1965, following 40 years of faculty service, Stanley retired with the rank of Distinguished Professor. In recognition of his service, the Republic of Lebanon conferred upon him its Order of Merit and its National Order of the Cedar (Chevalier rank). He and Elsa retired to Princeton, New Jersey. Stanley Kerr died in 1976.

He was the father of Malcolm H. Kerr, former president of the American University of Beirut, and the grandfather of NBA player, general manager, broadcaster, and coach Steve Kerr.

References

External links

• Google Books sample of Stanley Kerr's The Lions of Marash.
• Kerr mentioned in Google Books sample of "Starving Armenians" page 92.
• A selection of Stanley Kerr's papers relating to his work with the Near East Relief are held by the Zoryan Institute