A. Austin Pearre

Albert Austin Pearre, Jr. was born in Frederick, Maryland, the son of a physician, A. Austin Pearre, Sr. He was a graduate of the Boy’s High School in Frederick in 1915, and then received his bachelor’s and medical degrees at the University of Virginia.

Dr. Pearre at his retirement after 50 years, holding a picture of his father, also a physician.

Following medical school, Dr. Pearre served as an intern in Baltimore at the University of Maryland and Church Home and Hopkins hospitals before beginning his residency at Union Memorial in 1924.

He returned to Frederick to begin a medical practice that was uninterrupted for more than 50 years. (His father practiced for 52 years.) In addition to his private practice that specialized in internal medicine and cardiology, Dr. Pearre was the physician to Hood College for 40 years.

In the years around WWII, Dr. Pearre was president of the Frederick County Medical Society. He became the vice president of the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland in 1943, and its President in 1950.

He was also the physician to the Maryland Odd Fellows Home and the Maryland School for the Deaf for many years. From 1953 to 1955, he was the Chief of Staff at Frederick Memorial Hospital.

Dr. Pearre was named to the State Board of Health in 1953 by Gov. Theodore McKeldin. Dr. Pearre recommended that the Health Department focus its preventative medical capabilities on highway deaths, instead of smallpox, which was no longer a threat. Dr. Pearre was one of the first physicians to recognize that highway deaths were one of the nation’s most serious health problems.

Dr. Pearre helped organize the Frederick County Heart Association in 1953, and served as its President in 1963. He was a fellow at the American College of Physicians beginning in 1928. He was a long-standing member of the American and Southern Medical Associations, and on the board of the Maryland Blue Cross.

Dr. A. Austin Pearre died at age 80 in Frederick on July 21, 1979.