Dr. John P. Craig

Dr. John P. Craig of Tucson, Arizona, passed away September 22, 2016 of lung cancer. He was born in West Liberty, Ohio to the late Ralph “Red” and Viola Craig.

He is survived by a brother, Richard of Goshen, Indiana and a sister, Jane Ann of Tucson, Arizona.

He attended grammar and high school in West Liberty and was drafted his sophomore year at Oberlin College and rushed through Western Reserve Medical school where he became an Army medical doctor at the age of 24.

After World War II, he did graduate work at Harvard University and in 1949, he enlisted as an Army physician where he was stationed in Japan at the outbreak of the Korean War.  He was a Captain and Battalion surgeon in the Army.  After he returned from Japan, he participated in the Inchon Invasion on Korea’s west coast and later was nearly cut off when his unit was near the China border when the Chinese invaded from the North.  While in Korea, he had the assignment of assessing infectious diseases for which the Army at the time had no way to combat.

After the Armistice, he did more post-graduate work at Yale University where he became a professor of Immunology and Microbiology at the New York State Medical School.  In addition to teaching, he also did research through the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Health Organization, much of it in the former West Pakistan.

In 1993, The John P. Craig Award for Excellence in Microbiology and Immunology was established at the downstate campus of the New York State University.  It is an annual award given to the most outstanding medical student.  He retired to Tucson upon his retirement.

Dr. Craig was cremated and his cremains will be interred at the Craig family plot at the Fairview Cemetery in West Liberty at a later date with services handled by the staff of the Eichholtz Daring & Sanford Funeral Home in West Liberty.