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Mark Crooks, Ph.D., an outspoken and high-profile advocate of running, healthy diets and positive risk taking, died at the Kansas City Hospice July 8. He was 65. Private Family Services.
Born on January 15, 1945 in Mexico City, Mexico, he grew up to become a man of commanding stature for most of his adult life: 215 pounds of rock-hard muscle toughened by his love of running and fitness training. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas in 1976 in exercise physiology with a doctoral minor in sports psychology.
He began his professional career as co-founder of the Midwest Health and Lifestyle Institute in Gladstone, Missouri, Kansas City’s first heart-monitored rehabilitation center, where he worked with patients recovering from heart surgery.
Understanding the limits and potential of human physiology, he undertook a series of extreme fitness tests of endurance and courage, including a 90-foot leap off the Paseo Bridge in downtown Kansas City and a grueling five-day swim from Kansas City to St. Louis in the Missouri River. These and other feats attracted much media attention, catapulting him from an intense and private fitness advocate to local celebrity.
Mark’s story is also one punctuated by lifelong battles with his health. When he was age 2, he suffered from sinus infections, and an experimental therapy involved x-ray radiation. By today’s standards he received an unfiltered overdose of radiation, possibly predisposing him to cancer.
When he was eight, a tumor appeared on the left side of his neck; the diagnosis was neurogenic sarcoma. Surgeons removed muscle, lymph and nerve tissue responsible for assisting with head and neck rotation. Instead of becoming handicapped by the surgery, Mark stubbornly worked out, played football, and ran in track while at Bishop Miege High School, earning letters in both sports.
He joined the marines after high school, surviving mental and physical ordeals of three months of training at Parris Island, South Carolina. He may be the only marine who was also a cancer patient to endure rigorous training at Parris Island and to receive an Honorable Discharge as a lance corporal in 1966 after three years of service. In the Marine Corps he also learned to love running since new recruits run everywhere as they go about daily duties.
Mark studied tenaciously to earn his master’s degree and Ph.D., and insights during his education, as well as life experiences, became the foundation of a book he published in 1985 entitled Achieving Wellness through Positive Risk Taking: the End of Boredom. This book preceded many health and fitness trends of the 1980s and articulated now-commonplace ideas about nutrition and fitness. The book’s most original premise is set forth in the title. He believed – and proved by his own example – that ordinary people are capable of achieving much more than they think possible – if they prepare psychologically and physiologically.
Mark didn’t choose to live in a safe, predictable groove. His risk-taking nature and fate forced him to flirt with death 39 times, including a shotgun blowing up in his face, four motorcycle crashes, and a hang-glider mishap.
In 1992, Mark received a diagnosis of thyroid cancer, undoubtedly a residual of his overdose of x-ray radiation. Surgeons removed the cancerous gland, and 48 hours later he ran 2 ½ miles through wooded trails around his home. Aggressive post-surgical activity wasn’t rash: Mark had prepared himself with weeks of conditioning for quick reentry into extreme activity.
Nine years later he finished a four-mile run, coughing up blood and wheezing. After a carousel of medical tests, surgeons recommended surgery to remove a cancerous egg-shaped tumor.
True to his nature as a determined scientist and athlete, Mark spent six weeks getting into peak condition for one of the most painful surgeries imaginable. The following weeks were the most excruciating of his life.
Mark reflected on the irony of his own medical history: “I never smoked, and I avoided others who did. I was a running pioneer, doing it way before it became a social norm. I could not rationalize this happening to me. I had crafted my body into 215 lbs of toughness, and this was not part of the plan.”
Nevertheless, Mark struggled out of his hospital bed and set physical goals. For his one-year post-operative celebration he ran three miles nonstop.
Mark’s battles with cancer continued through the last several years, with prostate cancer and finally liver cancer, a pernicious reoccurrence to which he finally succumbed.
Needing much autonomy, while eschewing corporate politics, his career included owning a general contracting business for 25 years. He constructed over 350 decks in the Kansas City area and provided homeowners with electrical, remodeling and plumbing services. His affable nature and dedication to perfection earned him a successful word-of-mouth business and appreciation of hundreds of area homeowners, many of whom were unaware of his academic and fitness achievements. He was also a poet and commanding public speaker, sharing his stories of survival and tenacity with college students and business audiences.
Mark's last wish was of his daughters' uniting as sisters and was fulfilled two weeks before his passing.
Mark is survived by Shirley M. Morehouse, his spiritual partner and mother of his daughter, Sarah E. Miller of Shawnee, Kansas, her husband Scott M. Miller, two grandsons, Bryce J. Miller, and Blake S. Miller, another daughter, Amanda C. Crooks of Belton, Missouri, his mother Betty B. Bryant and his brother, John B. Crooks, both of Kansas City. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made in Mark’s name to the American Cancer Society or the Kansas City Hospice. |
