We are deeply grieved to tell you that the Hereditary Disease Foundation family has lost
a beloved and irreplaceable member, Dr. John ("Jack") B. Penney, Jr., who died suddenly of a
heart attack on January 31, 1999, at the age of fifty-one.
Jack Penney was Professor of Neurology at the Harvard Medical School and
Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where he treated patients and headed one of the
premiere neuropharmacology research laboratories in the world. Together with Dr. Anne B.
Young, Jack's life-long partner, wife and best friend, he focused his research on Huntington's,
Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's disease. One major interest lay in the basic functioning of the
basal ganglia, the parts of the brain that govern movement and whose functions are disturbed in
movement disorders such as Huntington's. For the past ten years, Jack's lab has been trying to
elucidate the complex interconnections among the pathways of the basal ganglia and to
understand how particular diseases disturb these connections. By focusing simultaneously on the
anatomy, biochemistry and pharmacology of the basal ganglia, Jack's group made great strides in
understanding how particular kinds of damage may lead to disorders as varied as Huntington's,
Parkinson's, and the dystonias.
Jack also studied the role of excitatory amino acids, chemical signals that are necessary
for normal brain function, but which, at excessive levels or in unusual circumstances, can
become highly toxic and kill neurons. He was particularly interested in defining the role of the
chemical receptors involved with glutamate, one of the most prominent neurotransmitters.
Glutamate appears to play a role in killing some nerve cells but not others in stroke, epilepsy,
Huntington's, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. When the gene for Huntington's disease was
identified in 1993, Jack's lab also began studying how this gene was expressed in tissue from
rodents and humans. His most recent publications included articles in the Annals of Neurology
and in the Journal of Comparative Neurology.
A New Englander by birth, Jack did his undergraduate work at Dartmouth in Psychology,
afterward receiving his M.D. from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore,
where he met and married Anne B. Young. He did his internship at Baltimore City Hospital,
while Anne finished her M.D., Ph.D. degrees. They both then did their neurology residencies at
the University of California at San Francisco. Jack later did a fellowship in Experimental
Neuropathology at the San Francisco Veterans Hospital. From San Francisco, Jack and Anne
moved to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where they managed to raise two brilliant
and beautiful daughters, Jessica, 21 years old, and Ellen, 19 years old. At the same time, they
made themselves indispensable to a wide range of patients, including many with Huntington's
and Parkinson's disease. In Ann Arbor, Jack and Anne began the critical basic research that
eventually led them to Boston and to Harvard.
For nearly twenty years, Jack had been a cherished and indispensable member of the
Venezuela-U.S. Collaborative Huntington's Disease Research Team, traveling every March with
Nancy Wexler, Anne Young and their team members to the barrios and fishing villages around
Lake Maracaibo. In Venezuela, Jack was famous not only for his spectacular clinical skills but
also for his warmth, sincerity, patience, tenderness, sense of perspective and generosity. He
learned Spanish so that he could communicate directly with the families living in the barrios. He
cried in diagnosing young children with Huntington's disease. In response to the suffering they
observed all around them, he and Anne founded the Venezuela Family Fund to pay for a
physician, medicines and food for Venezuela family members. Besides doing the neurological
exams that are part of the research study, Jack acted as unofficial photographer, bringing his
video camera early on to document research activity.
As a brilliant research scientist and teacher, gifted clinician, loving father and husband,
caring and generous friend and colleague, superb skier and enthusiastic fan of the football field,
Jack Penney lives on in our hearts and minds. We are all richer for having had him in our lives.
Our hearts go out to Anne, Jessie and Ellen, his wonderful family, at this time of mourning. We
hope that his memory will be a comfort to them as it is to us.
Jack made the greatest gift possible at this untimely time. He donated his organs so that
other people could gain some solace, health, vision and renewal thanks to his gift.
Jack's family is planning a memorial service on Saturday, May 22, 1999 at 2:00 pm at the
First and Second Church (corner of Marlborough and Berkeley Streets) in Boston. In lieu of
flowers, contributions may be made to the John B. Penney Jr., M.D., Memorial Fund for
Parkinson's and Huntington's Disease Research, VBK 915, Neurology Department,
Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02114.
It would please us very greatly if all of those who knew him would send some of their
recollections of Jack Penney - however short or however long. We at the Hereditary Disease
Foundation would like to put together a collection of your memories, your anecdotes, your
observations, and anything about Jack that you think of interest. We would like to present such a
collection to Jack's family, not only to his immediate family, Anne, Jessie and Ellen, but to his
larger family that includes his wide community of scientific colleagues and students, patients,
friends, and the trustees and supporters of the Hereditary Disease Foundation, with whom Jack
worked for nearly two decades. Such a collection might offer some small comfort and would give
continuity to a life that was tragically cut short.
Your messages to the Foundation would be deeply appreciated.
