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Along with many other men and women, these people worked at the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse laboratory during the years 1921–1928 and played important roles in the research on Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF). Three of them lost their lives researching RMSF during the schoolhouse years.
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Leaders’ Profiles
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Robert Allen Cooley (1873 – 1968)
Dr. Robert Cooley was an energetic person. Over his 47-year career as an entomologist (a person who studies insects) in Montana, he taught students, dipped cows, created a world-class collection of ticks, and did basic research on Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF).
Cooley was born in Deerfield, Massachusetts, and graduated from Massachusetts Agricultural College with a BS degree in 1895. Although he was only 26-years old, he became head of the Department of Zoology and Entomology at Montana State College. In 1903, he helped get legislation passed in Montana to establish the position of State Entomologist for Montana, and he became the first one to hold the position. It was his job to travel the state and study outbreaks of insects injurious to crops or people. He began with a $300 travel budget, which would be a little over $9,000 today. On an assignment to the Bitterroot Valley during July 8–24, 1903, Cooley investigated outbreaks of oyster-shell bark-louse on apple trees and the apple tree borer. He submitted an expense sheet for $21.85.
But his work shifted from insects wreaking agricultural havoc to insects causing human illness, especially RMSF, which is transmitted by tick bites. He thought that humans might be coming into contact with the ticks through their livestock and in the 1910s recommended that livestock such as cattle be “dipped” in disinfectant to control ticks. He conducted an exhaustive study of the life cycle of the Rocky Mountain wood tick, or Dermacentor andersoni, which was a carrier of RMSF. In the process, he collected many species of ticks, creating an unrivalled research collection.
He was in charge of Montana’s RMSF work between 1917–1921, which were years when the U.S. Public Health Service was not involved in this work. When the Public Health Service and the State of Montana began working together again on RMSF, at Montana’s request, at the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse laboratory, Cooley was there as head entomologist. In 1931, he became a Public Health Service employee instead of a Montana state employee, and also retired from his position at Montana State University. In 1936, he received an honorary doctorate from Montana State College, receiving the “Dr.” title that he had earned several times over during his career. He stayed at Rocky Mountain Laboratories until he retired in 1946.
Robert A. Cooley died in 1968 at the age of 95 in Hamilton, Montana, in the Bitterroot Valley which had been one of his first research trips as a young entomologist in 1903. The Cooley Laboratory at Montana State University, dedicated to biomedical research, is named in his honor.
Learn more about Cooley:
“The namesake for the newly renovated Cooley Laboratory helped lead the fight against Rocky Mountain spotted fever,” by Sepp Jannotta, MSU News, Oct. 12, 2012.
“Robert Allen Cooley, 1973-1968,” Glen M. Kohls, Journal of Economic Entomology, Volume 62, Issue 4, 1 August 1969, Page 972.
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The relationship between Parker, who worked for the State of Montana, and Dr. Roscoe Spencer, who was the Public Health Service officer in charge of the laboratory, was an arrangement that worked despite of its awkwardness. Spencer developed the vaccine in the Hygienic Laboratory (precursor to the National Institutes of Health) in Washington, D.C., but more tests and then production of the vaccine occurred in the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse laboratory, which was run by Parker when Spencer wasn’t there. It was the production of the vaccine that led to the construction of a building especially designed for scientific work and which replaced the schoolhouse in 1928.
Parker and Spencer collaborated on studies of other diseases as well. Tularemia and its transmission were another of Parker’s passions, whether it was transmitted by ticks, deer flies, or the pathogen Pasteurella tularensis which he found in ground water. He also studied Q fever, a bacterial infection that can cause heart valve problems, and which is often transmitted by breathing in contaminated air around infected animals such as livestock. Plague was first reported in Montana under Parker.
In 1930, the whole operation became part of the U.S. Public Health Service, and Parker became director of the Rocky Mountain Laboratories. Choosing the right people for the job was one of Parker’s talents as an administrator. He convinced Dr. Herald Cox to join the laboratory to try to make producing the vaccine easier than requiring many stages of tick feedings. Cox lived up to Parker’s expectations by developing a way to grow the pathogen in chick embryos instead. This method is still used in the preparation of many vaccines. Dr. Mason Hargett was also enticed to the laboratory by Parker just before World War II. Yellow fever could have become a terrible problem for U.S. troops during the war, but Hargett and the Rocky Mountain Laboratories produced a vaccine that erased that national security concern.
When Parker died unexpectedly in 1949, he left behind contributions in many areas of tick and other insect transmitted diseases. For example, in 1937, he discovered a rickettsia (a group of small bacteria that cause various diseases in people and are transmitted through insect bites) isolated from the Gulf Coast tick, Amblyomma maculatum. This bacterium, which is also a cause of a spotted fever, was characterized as a unique Rickettsial species in 1965 and named Rickettsia parkeri in honor of its discoverer. That’s a fitting tribute for a person who increased our knowledge about insect-borne diseases so much.
“Ralph R. Parker,” Victor Haas, Science Magazine, Vol 111, January 20, 1950, page 56-57.
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In Memoriam
“What shall we say of the some twenty-five workers, who fully appreciating the dangers incident to the daily routine, still continue at a rate of compensation not higher than the gain in other kinds of work in which these dangers are lacking. We may say, at least, that idealism and the spirit of sacrifice for the general good have not died out.”
- (Quote: “The Cooperation with the United States Public Health Service,” Robert A. Cooley, Eighth Biennial Report, Montana State Board of Entomology, 1929–1930, page 10.)
The 25 workers who Cooley wrote about included people working for both the State of Montana and the U.S. Public Health Service. Three of these researchers died during the years that the Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF) work was being done at the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse laboratory. Cooley had taught two of them—William Gittinger and Arthur Kerlee—at Montana State College. On June 6, 1929, Cooley dedicated the Gittinger-Kerlee memorial plaque at Montana State College to his former students.
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