Due to their physical condition, audiotapes are closed until transfer to a more stable medium.
Correspondence, reports, minutes, speeches, interviews, notes, scrapbooks, posters, phonodiscs, audiotapes, photographs, and artifacts documenting the professional career of Frank A. Calderone. In contrast, there is little relating to his family life. There is considerable material relating to his role as District Health Officer for New York City's Lower East Side, including records of the Mother's Health Organization, created by Calderone to improve pediatric nutrition; and letters from diabetics in response to a Calderone article on the subject.
Records of his work with the World Health Organization (WHO) include correspondence with Brock Chisholm, first Director-General of WHO, discussing a wide range of political and public health issues. Other organizations documented include the Occupational Health Institute, American Committee for Italian Migration, and the Welfare and Health Council of New York.
History and Biography
Frank Anthony Calderone was born in New York City on March 10, 1901, the son of Salvatore and Rosaria Spoleti Calderone. His father, a prosperous Italian immigrant, owned a chain of movie theaters in Nassau County, N.Y. Frank Calderone was graduated from Stuyvesant High School, attended Columbia College (non-graduate, Class of 1921) and received his medical degree from New York University in 1924.
Calderone was an instructor in pharmacology at NYU from 1931 to 1936, and in 1937 received his master's degree in public health from Johns Hopkins. In 1938, he became the New York City Health Department's District Health Officer for the Lower East Side, where he was responsible for the neighborhood's new Health and Teaching Center. He was named Secretary of the department in 1942 and First Deputy Commissioner in 1943.
In 1946, Calderone became Director, Headquarters Office, Interim Commission of the World Health Organization (WHO). After WHO became a permanent agency of the United Nations in 1948, he served as Chief Technical Liaison Officer and Director of the New York Liaison Office until his resignation at the end of 1949.
After briefly serving as Director of the New York City Cancer Committee, Calderone was Director of Health Services for the United Nations Secretariat from 1951 to 1954. He served, 1955-1957, as President of the Occupational Health Institute, an organization devoted to "helping management establish sound health practices and programs." After 1957, Calderone devoted himself to his private medical practice in Nassau County, N.Y. and to managing his family's theater and real estate interests.
Calderone was first married in 1929 to Lola Calderone; they were divorced in 1941. That same year he married Mary Steichen, a physician who was the daughter of the photographer Edward Steichen. She later became a leader in the field of sex education.
After his death in 1987, Calderone's will established the Frank A. Calderone Medal and Prize. The Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health awards them to individuals who have made significant contributions to the field of public health. The first recipient was C. Everett Koop in 1992.
Organization
Organized in nine series:
I. Personal correspondence/Subject files
II. Professional organizations
III. New York City Department of Health
IV. World Health Organization
V. United Nations Medical Director
VI. Occupational Health Institute
VII. Photographs and artifacts
VIII. Audio recordings
IX. Scrapbooks.
Correspondence, reports, minutes, speeches, interviews, notes, scrapbooks, posters, phonodiscs, audiotapes, photographs and artifacts documenting the public health career of Frank A. Calderone, physician and public health official.
The bulk of the Calderone papers dates from 1936 to 1957. There is no family correspondence and nothing on his parallel career managing his family's theater business.
I: Personal correspondence/subject files
Largely relating to Calderone's education, the series includes class notes on public health (possibly from his time at Johns Hopkins); awards and certificates; speeches and talks; and a small amount of personal correspondence.
II: Professional organizations
Records of Calderone's involvement with several organizations mostly devoted to public health. His role in the American Committee for Italian Migration (ACIM) and the Welfare and Health Council of New York is particularly well-documented.
The ACIM was founded in 1952 as an outgrowth of the National Catholic Resettlement Council to promote "fair and equitable immigration" of Italians to the US, and to challenge the 1924 immigration laws. Calderone was the founding chairman of the ACIM's Long Island Chapter. Included are financial records, membership lists, newspaper clippings, press releases, programs, copies of the "ACIM Dispatch," and correspondence with officers of the national organization.
The Welfare and Health Council of New York City resulted from a 1952 merger of the Welfare Council of New York with the Health Council of Greater New York. Calderone joined the latter organization in 1950 and remained active in the new association, serving as Chairman of the Health Education Division and being named to the Board of Directors. Records include minutes of the Board of Directors and various committees, reports, publicity materials and correspondence.
III: New York City Department of Health
Public health work in diphtheria, tuberculosis, diabetes and nutrition is all documented here with a particular focus on the Lower East Side. The Mother's Health Organization (MHO), created by Calderone to improve pediatric nutrition by working directly through neighborhood mothers, is the largest single subject. Included are correspondence, summary reports, newspaper clippings, nutrition pamphlets and transcripts of speeches and radio interviews (including some by Mary Steichen, the organization's executive secretary). A scrapbook relating to this initiative can be found in Series IX.
Records of the "Parade of Nations," planned to celebrate the opening of the Lower East Side Health and Teaching Center, are also voluminous. The bulk is correspondence with the neighborhood's numerous ethnic organizations, the foreign-language press and diplomatic representatives. Another highlight are letters, many in Yiddish, from diabetics writing about their condition in response to an article in the Jewish Daily Forward on the Department's work in this field (Box 3:8-9; Box 4:1).
IV: World Health Organization
The correspondence between Calderone and Brock Chisholm, Interim Director and, later, Director-General of WHO is voluminous and substantive (Box 6:7-8). A wide range of political and public health issues is discussed, particularly the ratification of WHO's constitution and its relationship with other UN and public health agencies. Calderone's possibly unpublished account (c. 1950) of the early years of WHO, "The World Health Organization - The First Three Years," (Box 7:3) provides a concise overview of the achievements of the organization in its infancy. The audiotapes in Series VIII also document Calderone's activities while with WHO.
V: United Nations Medical Director
There is little relating to Calderone's time as UN Medical Director, 1951-1954. Included are a departmental handbook (1953) and a report of the organization of the UN Secretariat.
VI: Occupational Health Institute
The bulk of the series documents a survey on "the future of industrial medicine" personally undertaken by Calderone in 1955 while he was president of the OHI. This was a "qualitative" survey by letter of over 1,000 individuals in leadership positions in industry, labor, insurance, medicine and public health. Their responses were the basis for Calderone's article, "The Economics of Preventive Medicine: A Synthesis of Opinion," published in the March 1956 issue of Industrial Medicine and Surgery. Included are responses to the initial survey as well as to Calderone's article; correspondence with Edward Bernays, who was employed by OHI to consult on the survey and to publicize its findings; and other published material regarding the survey.
In addition, there is considerable correspondence relating to the general activities of the Institute, as well as minutes and reports.
VII: Photographs and artifacts
Photographs largely date from Calderone’s time with the World Health Organization and include portraits and photos of WHO meetings and events. Other images are of him with Eleanor Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower, as well as a photo of Admiral Chester Nimitz signing the Japanese surrender articles inscribed by Nimitz to Calderone. Artifacts include buttons and a poster produced to publicize the Mothers Health Organization.
VIII: Audio recordings
Recordings of Calderone telephone conversations, speeches and dictated correspondence dating from his time with the World Health Organization, 1947-1949. Much of the subject matter appears to relate to WHO activities during an Egyptian cholera epidemic. The series consists of reel-to-reel audiotapes and the original dictation machine phonodiscs from which the tapes were made. Because archives staff was unable to listen to these recordings due to their fragile physical condition, description of the contents is taken from notes on the boxes.
IX: Scrapbooks
There are two scrapbooks. The first volume, entitled "Blueprint of the Mothers Health Organization: Democracy through Health" dates to 1941 and documents this program of the New York City Department of Health to improve childhood nutrition with the assistance of mothers. Contents include posters, flyers, pamphlets and other educational and promotional materials; newspaper clippings; photographs; buttons; and menus;
The second volume bears the title "Global Health," and was produced by the Publicity Committee of the American Public Health Association for its "Wartime Public Health Conference" held in New York, Oct. 12-14, 1943. Calderone was the committee's chairman. The volume records the planning and execution of the conference and includes correspondence, telegrams, newspaper clippings and photographs.
Subject Headings and Related Records
Administrative Information
Transfer from the Mailman School of Public Health, 1998 (accession #98.12.22); gift of Francesca Calderone-Steichen, 2022 (accession #2022.008)