Nugent-Main-11216.jpg
Longtime Team Physician Passes Away
November 02, 2016 11:21 AM | Football
Dr. Robert “Bob” Nugent, one of the nation’s most respected neurosurgeons and a former medical staffer for Mountaineer football, has died.
Dr. Nugent’s affiliation with the West Virginia University football program began in 1968 when Jim Carlen was coaching the team and continued through 2013 - a total of 46 seasons tending to the medical needs of Mountaineer football players.
Dr. Robert Nugent
Nugent, a Yonkers, New York, native, was a 1950 cum laude graduate of Kenyon College. He received his medical degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1953 and completed his neurosurgical training at Duke in 1958.
Nugent then returned to Cincinnati and worked there until being offered a position in West Virginia University’s Neurosurgery Department in 1961. Nugent received the Most Valuable Teacher Award in 1970, the same year he was named Chairman of the Division of Neurosurgery, a position he held until 1985.
He was the founding Chairman of the Board of Directors of the West Virginia University Medical Corporation, a position he held for nine years, and was also the founding President of the West Virginia Neurosurgical Society and Vice President of the Southern Neurosurgical Society in 1981.
Dr. Nugent received WVU Medical Center Clinician of the Year awards in 1984 and 1987, was named Most Loyal Mountaineer of West Virginia in 1991, and in 1992, was named West Virginia Doctor of the year.
Two years later, in 1994, Nugent was named to the Order of Vandalia - the highest award West Virginia University can bestow.
“In the early 1960s, Morgantown was a dingy, dirty coal town,” Nugent said in an online article posted by the Department of Neurosurgery to commemorate his 50th year of service to West Virginia University in 2011. “I had questions about whether I would stay here.”
Obviously he did.
“When I first came here, all of us were so dedicated to providing good patient care and service to the community … to prove that this medical center was worth it,” he said. “We did not even have a billing policy set up for almost a year. Finally, Dean (Clark) Sleeth said, ‘Listen guys, we’ve got to get together and get organized and set up a billing program.’
“We were treating all these people without billing them, and a rumor got established that (then-Governor) Okey Patteson had built this new medical center with free care for the people of West Virginia,” he said.
Among Dr. Nugent’s many professional interests was the neurosurgical treatment of pain and was frequently a sought-after speaker on that topic, according to his online biography in the Society of Neurological Surgeons.
Dr. Nugent and his late wife, Virginia, had five children - Dana, Robert Jr., Leslie, Barnes and Courtney.
He was 95.
Cam Cook | March 30
Monday, March 30
Coach Jay Boulware | March 30
Monday, March 30
Coach Rich Rodriguez | March 30
Monday, March 30
Rick Trickett | March 24
Tuesday, March 24
