Ralph L. Sacco, 65, Dies

Abstract

![Graphic][1]</img> Ralph L. Sacco, MD, MS, FAAN, FAHA, the only physician to have served as both the president of the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American Academy of Neurology (AAN), the first neurologist to serve as president of the AHA, and an expert on stroke risk and prevention, died January 17, 2023, of a brain tumor at his home in Long Island, NY. The founder of the Northern Manhattan Study, a professor of neurology, public health sciences, human genetics, and neurosurgery at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine and the Olemberg Family Chair in Neurological Disorders, he was 65. For Dr. Sacco, who grew up in Margate City, NJ, 3 blocks from the Jersey shore, there was no more peaceful place than the beach. After settling in New York to do his residency in neurology in 1983 at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, he began to spend his free time in the Hamptons where he developed a zeal for boating, interior design, and architecture. The eldest of 5 children, Dr. Sacco occasionally worked in the family business, Sack O′ Subs, cutting cold cuts and stacking steaks. “I didn't like working around food because I ate too much,” he would later confess, adding that he preferred his paper route, except when being chased by dogs. He set his sights on medicine after an aunt suggested that he would be well-suited for the career. Growing up in the disco era, he and his sister, Bess, 2 years his junior, would frequent the dance clubs in Atlantic City and Wildwood, NJ, along with mutual friends. Few people knew that he was skilled at freestyle—save those who later invited him to their weddings, and the close friends that he called his chosen family who accompanied him and his husband, Scott Dutcher, on coastal vacations … [1]: /embed/inline-graphic-1.gif