[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12683-12684]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



  TRIBUTE TO DR. ALBERT SOLNIT

 Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, it is with sadness that I come 
to the floor today to note the untimely passing of a great man whose 
life and work in Connecticut have made my State, and our country, a 
better place, particularly for our children.
  Dr. Albert Solnit, Chair of the Yale Child Study Center from 1966 to 
1983 and Commissioner of Mental Health and Addiction Services for the 
State of Connecticut from 1991 to 2000, died tragically and suddenly on 
June 21, as a result of injuries sustained in a car accident earlier 
that day. This loss has compounded the mourning of the men and women of 
the Yale Child Study Center, who lost another former director in Donald 
Cohen last October.
  Albert Solnit spent an entire lifetime serving his fellow human 
beings with great dedication, enthusiasm, and distinction. Having 
served in the U.S. Army as a psychiatrist, Dr. Solnit arrived at Yale, 
my alma mater, in 1948, as a psychiatric resident. Two years later, he 
became the first trainee in child psychiatry ever at the Child Study 
Center. In another 2 years, he joined the faculty of the Center. And by 
1964, he was a full professor there. With years of diverse training in 
medicine, pediatrics, anatomy, and communicable diseases and a 
passionate commitment to bettering the lives of children of 
Connecticut, Dr. Solnit became director of the Child Study Center in 
1966.
  Every day, Dr. Solnit would arrive at the Yale Child Study Center 
long before his colleagues. He would work late into the evening. He 
didn't have to; after all, he was the boss. But he did, because he had 
a tireless work ethic and a clear vision of how his effort could better 
the world.
  Even if I had an hour or two here on the floor, I could not catalogue 
Dr. Solnit's accomplishments in full. So let me focus briefly on what 
were his deepest interests: assisting children caught in complicated 
custody situations, children being adopted, or children committed to 
the well-intentioned, though often challenging, foster care system of 
my state. Dr. Solnit didn't simply observe and dissect problems with 
the status quo; he corrected them. He helped set the standards for how 
the legal system would work with child development experts on behalf of 
children. In the late 1960s, he worked with the state government to 
develop a new department of juvenile delinquency called the Department 
of Children and Youth Services, and to build a separate State 
psychiatric hospital that would treat only children, and treat them 
with special focus and care.
  He wrote two books, ``In the Best Interests of the Child'' and 
``Beyond the Best Interests of the Child,'' that are known as classics 
in the field of child mental health.
  This man was always taking his vast range of knowledge and figuring 
out how best to apply it to touch the lives of others. He was always 
mentoring his colleagues. He was always nurturing children. It is with 
sorrow that I mourn his sudden death, and it is with far greater pride, 
respect, and love that I pay tribute today to the life of inspiration 
that Dr. Al Solnit gave to us all.
  I extend my deepest condolences to his colleagues at the Child Study 
Center, to his wife Martha, and to his children David, Ruth, Ben, and 
Aaron--and their families.
  And I ask that the following obituary, written by Dean David Kessler 
of the Yale School of Medicine, be printed into the Record, so that 
this man's life, a model to which we might all aspire, is remembered 
forever.
  The obituary follows:

       Dear Faculty, It is with great sadness that I write to 
     inform you of yet another deep and tragic loss of a member of 
     the faculty and senior leadership of the Yale Child Study 
     Center and Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Albert J. Solnit died 
     on Friday evening, June 21st, as a result of injuries he 
     sustained in an automobile accident earlier that day. His 
     wife, Martha, was also involved in the accident and is in 
     stable condition in the intensive care unit of Waterbury 
     Hospital.
       Dr. Solnit was chair of the Child Study Center from 1966 to 
     1983 and Commissioner of Mental Health and Addiction Services 
     for the State of Connecticut from 1991 to 2000. He was also 
     the Sterling Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics and Psychiatry 
     in the Child Study Center. Named a Sterling Professor in 
     1970, he was the middle of three Sterling professors who led 
     the Center. The most recent was Donald J. Cohen who succeeded 
     Dr. Solnit as chairman of the Center in 1983, and who died 
     last October.
       Al arrived at Yale in 1948 as a psychiatric resident and in 
     1950 became the first trainee in child psychiatry in the 
     Child Study Center. He was born in 1919 and grew up in Los 
     Angeles, California, attended the University of California in 
     Berkeley and San Francisco, and received his medical degree 
     in 1943. After pediatric training in Long Island College 
     Hospital, he entered the U.S. Army and served as a 
     psychiatrist during his two-year commitment. He joined the 
     faculty of the Child Study Center in 1952 and became a full 
     professor in 1964. Like his predecessor, Al came to his 
     leadership position at the Child Study Center with a broad 
     background that also included a masters degree in anatomy and 
     a year as a resident in communicable diseases. He also had 
     begun psychoanalytic training in the New York Psychoanlytic 
     Institute from which he graduated in 1955.
       Al's tenure as chair of the Center was infused with his 
     distinctive energy and broad vision, he was a man of 
     remarkable stamina, arriving at Center long before his 
     colleagues and continuing to work late into the evening, a 
     characteristic that was enduring from his very first years at 
     Yale through the day before this death. Long concerned for 
     the needs for poor and underprivileged children, he had been 
     working as consultant to various school districts and many 
     child-serving such social agencies in the New Haven community 
     and the state. In the late 60's, he worked with the state 
     government of Connecticut to develop new department of 
     juvenile delinquency, the Department of Children and Youth 
     Services, and to build a separate state psychiatric hospital 
     for children.
       In his effort to bring the Center into the community, Al 
     built bridges throughout the university and the city of New 
     Haven. Among those initiatives was his collaborative work 
     with the law school. Trained as a child and adult 
     psychoanalyst he cared deeply for children caught in the 
     turmoil of the foster care system, or complicated custody 
     situations. With his close colleagues, Anna Freud and Joseph 
     Goldstein, he set the standards for an informed, 
     collaborative interface between the legal system and child 
     development experts on behalf of children. His books, In the 
     Best Interests of the Child and Beyond the Best Interests of 
     the Child, are recognized classics in the field of child 
     mental health. Throughout his career--even up to last week--
     he was regularly consulting with colleagues and trainees 
     about how to think about complex questions of adoption, 
     custody, and child placement. His perceptiveness in these 
     often difficult areas was legendary and much respected by 
     judges and child psychiatrists alike. Other of his scholarly 
     contributions, set forth in seventeen

[[Page 12684]]

     books and over two hundred papers and chapters, set the tone 
     of the emerging field of child psychiatry.
       Al maintained strong and close ties to pediatrics and to 
     pediatricians. He established a long-standing collaborative 
     group involving both child psychiatrists and practicing 
     pediatricians that has met monthly for over forty years to 
     discuss the common clinical ground between the two 
     disciplines. He developed the concept of the `vulnerable 
     child' that detailed the effects on parents and children of 
     neonatal or very clearly serious illness or threatened 
     illness. With his close colleagues, Sally Provence, Julius 
     Richmond, and Irving Harris. Al also began the organization 
     Zero To Three that defined the field of infant psychiatry.
       Al was a recognized and prodigious leader in the world of 
     child mental health and child psychoanalysis. He was 
     president of the American Psychoanalytic Association from 
     1970 to 1971; of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent 
     Psychiatry from 1971-73; and of the International Association 
     of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions 
     from 1974-76. In the latter organization, he remained an 
     active, contributing member of the leadership and was 
     intimately involved just this past week in developing a new 
     training agenda to bring international child mental health 
     scholars together. He was editor of the Psychoanalytic Study 
     of the Child, a position he assumed in 1971 and through which 
     he turned the journal into one of the leading publications in 
     the field. Al was an international leader in psychoanalysis. 
     He was actively involved with the Yale Press and with the 
     Muriel Gardiner Seminar for Psychoanalysis and the 
     Humanities. Both of these efforts reflect Al's broad 
     intellectual interests and his ability to span fields. He was 
     an enduringly curious scholar and enjoyed most bringing 
     individuals from different disciplines together to encourage 
     cross-talk and interdisciplinary understanding. He was 
     masterful in his ability to detect even the faintest 
     possibility of common ground among apparently disparate 
     points of view and for bringing these groups together.
       Many individuals in the field of child psychiatry, and more 
     broadly child mental health, attribute their careers to Al's 
     ability to see their potential and make connections that put 
     them in the right place at a critical time for their personal 
     development. He worked often quietly behind the scenes to 
     help young faculty members find sufficient help and resources 
     to start their research or to feel sufficiently grounded so 
     that they could flourish. He stayed in touch with his 
     patients for years, long after they were adults and parents, 
     even grandparents, themselves and he never ceased to be their 
     physician, always available and sensitive to their needs.
       Though an emeritus professor, Al Solnit was by no means 
     retired. He was mentoring, guiding, and caring every hour of 
     the day. He was a vital, present member of the Child Study 
     Center's leadership and carried the wisdom afforded by living 
     the history of a place. His untimely, unexpected death cuts 
     short a continuing vigorous life with mentoring and 
     leadership yet to give.
       I know you join me in extending sympathy to all of his 
     colleagues in the Child Study Center and to his wife Martha, 
     his children David, Ruth, Ben, Aaron, and their families.
       Al Solnit was a vital citizen of this medical school and 
     university. We shall miss him and do our best to carry out 
     his constant imperative that there is always more to be done 
     on behalf of the world's children.--David Kessler, M.D., 
     Dean, Yale School of Medicine.

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