WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Robert W. Tucker, M.D., associate professor of internal medicine- hematology and oncology at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, was killed in an automobile accident on Thursday near Lewisville.
Tucker took a leadership role in outreach activities of the Comprehensive Cancer of Wake Forest University and spearheaded oncology clinics in outlying areas. Since July, he had been working primarily at the center’s clinic in Elkin.
“This is a great loss to us both personally and professionally,” said Bayard Powell, M.D., section head of hematology and oncology at Wake Forest Baptist. “Dr. Tucker served as a role model for the physician-patient relationship. He was a tremendous patient advocate and always put his patients first.”
Colleague and close friend Timothy Oaks, M.D., a cardiothoracic surgeon at Wake Forest Baptist, said, “He was such a conscientious doctor who cared for each individual patient not only as a patient, but as a person. He will be sorely missed.”
Tucker graduated from Dartmouth College, magna cum laude, in 1963 with a double major in mathematics and physics, and received a master’s degree in physiology in 1967 at Oxford University in England, which he attended with both a Reynolds Fellowship and a Marshall Scholarship.
He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1970, did his internal medicine residency at Duke University and a fellowship in hematology/oncology at Sidney Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. After completing his fellowship, he served as an instructor for one year before moving to the Johns Hopkins Oncology Center in Baltimore, where he was associate professor of oncology and, in the university’s medical institution, associate professor of cell biology and anatomy.
He moved to Wake Forest Baptist in 1995 as an associate professor, and in addition to clinics at Elkin and Wake Forest Baptist, he had conducted cancer clinics at Lexington Memorial Hospital in Lexington.
Tucker had published 13 book chapters and 47 articles in scientific journals.
He is survived by his wife, Mary Kay Munday, and his two daughters, Christine Tucker and Elizabeth Tucker.
###
Media Contacts: Robert Conn, rconn@wfubmc.edu Shannon Koontz, shkoontz@wfubmc.edu, or Karen Richardson, krchrdsn@wfubmc.edu, at 336-716-4587.
About Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center: Wake Forest Baptist is an academic health system comprised of North Carolina Baptist Hospital and Wake Forest University Health Sciences, which operates the university’s School of Medicine. The system comprises 1,298 acute care, psychiatric, rehabilitation and long-term care beds and is consistently ranked as one of “America’s Best Hospitals” by U.S. News & World Report.