The Harold B. Rose Memorial Fund
Harold “Hal” Rose
May 19, 1925 – April 8, 2015
Harold “Hal” Rose, has completed the first leg of an amazing journey of life and has now rejoined his beloved Ellie to continue their journey together and watch over their family. Hal, who would have been 90 on May 19, following a years-long and valiant struggle with cancer, passed away peacefully at home on the evening of April 8, surrounded by his family. Exactly the way that he scripted it.
Born in Tucson, Arizona, Hal came with his mother Viola to Los Angeles as a young boy. Always a tinkerer, he began taking apart and fixing radios and other electronic equipment at an early age – a passion and skill that would drive his entire career, all the way through his final days. Following graduation from Fairfax High School, Hal enlisted in the United States Army and became part of this nation’s Greatest Generation, serving in the 70th Infantry Division – “The Trailblazers” – attached to Patton’s 3rd Army in the Central European and Rhineland Campaigns. Like his penchant for creating and fixing things, Hal’s military service would have a profound influence on his life and those he encountered over the next seven decades. He continued that military service throughout the late 1950s and into the early 1960s as a United States Air Force Reserve officer.
Following his return from Europe, Hal enrolled in college and graduated with a BS in electrical engineering, attending Montana State University, UCLA and UC Berkeley. Hal’s early career consisted of a series of jobs that included many mission critical engineering developments in the aerospace industry. In the early 1960s, Hal’s career moved into the nascent field of biomedical engineering that would become his life’s true calling and passion. Starting with a fishing-tackle-box forerunner of today’s electrocardiograph equipment (something he developed at nights and on weekends in his Monterey Park garage), Hal went on to develop numerous biomedical diagnostic devices – all driven by the underlying theory that diagnostics could be more effectively executed in a non-invasive manner. Following an early 1970s return to school for a doctorate in science from Indiana Northern University, Hals’ passion for biomedical engineering led to a senior leadership position at what was then Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles, and for nearly 20 years at what became the Cedars Sinai Medical Center. The laboratory that Hal founded (and later spun off from Cedars) focused on creating and improving non-invasive protocols for stroke and cardiovascular disease detection – saving many lives in the process and vastly improving the care and comfort of patients everywhere. As a prostate cancer survivor, Hal knew that there had to be better ways of detecting and diagnosing prostate cancer. He set about developing these tools and methodologies as his life’s work, carried forward today with local academic and venture capital support.
Despite all of his professional accomplishments, all in life paled in comparison to the life-long joy and now eternal contentment Hal was blessed with following a 1952 blind date with a beautiful Los Angeles coed – Eleanor Goldstyn. Introduced by mutual friends, Hal and his Ellie were married on December 27, 1953 and began their loving adventure together – something that Hal cherished for every breathing moment of the rest of his life. Hal spoke passionately and wistfully of her and their life together, all the way up until his last moment. In addition to the warm embrace of the Goldstyn clan as it’s “last son,” Hal and Ellie would go on to raise and grow their family to five, including sons Alex (married to Mary Ann King), Bruce (married to Rosemary) and Stephanie, and Hal and Ellie’s three grandchildren, Michelle and Michael Rose and Kara Rubenstein. Throughout the ups and downs and turns of Hal and Ellie’s life together, family would always be the paramount, central and driving force in their lives and in everything they would do. Despite losing his beloved Ellie in 2005, it has been this family passion and focus that Hal takes to his bride today as they reunite and continue to watch over the family they created and loved and the thousands of lives they both touched, impacted and loved. A true one-of-a-kind from the Greatest Generation; a true one-of-a-kind couple that will endure in all they touched.
Funeral services will be held at Mount Sinai Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills, on Sunday April 12, 2015 at 10:00 am. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to any of the following: The Carrington Charitable Foundation, c/o www.carringtoncf.org, the Over The Rainbow Association, Evanston, Illinois, c/o www.otrassn.org or by contacting Stephanie Rose at srose@gmail.com.