Earl Rose (coroner)

Rose was born in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, on September 23, 1926, to Foresta cowboy and rodeo rider and Lena Berghuis Rose. In the spring of 1944, at the end of his junior year, the 17-year-old Rose dropped out of high school and enlisted in the United States Navy where he served on a submarine, the USS Sea Devil, in the Pacific theater of World War II. According to Rose, at the end of hostilities his boat moored in Shanghai and Qingdao, China, and served as a "military presence" patrolling the China Seas. He was discharged from the Navy in 1946, then attended Yankton College from which he graduated with a B.A. 1949. While at Yankton, he met Marilyn Preheim, who was a medical tech student at a nearby hospital. The couple married in the Mennonite Church on July 28, 1951, and eventually had a son and five daughters. Rose studied medicine for two years at the University of South Dakota, then earned his M.D. from the University of Nebraska in 1953. In the mid-1950s, he interned in Denver, Colorado, worked in private practice in Lemmon, South Dakota, then completed specialty training with residencies at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas (surgical pathology) and DePaul Hospital in St. Louis (clinical pathology). Rose then sub-specialized with a fellowship in forensic pathology at the Medical College of Virginia. He worked as a forensic pathologist in Virginia where he held the title of Deputy Chief Examiner for the Tidewater Region of Virginia. In June 1963, Rose moved to Dallas where he became medical examiner for the city and county of Dallas. According to The New York Times, he was "hired by the county to establish a scientifically valid medical examiner’s system to replace its existing system of elected lay coroners." While working as a medical examiner in Dallas, Rose received a law degree from Southern Methodist University. ==Kennedy assassination==

John F. Kennedy On November 22, 1963, Rose was in his office at Parkland Memorial Hospital across the corridor from Trauma Room 1 when he received word that Kennedy was pronounced dead. For his role in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, he was disparaged by William Manchester in his 1967 book The Death of a President. According to a 2003 AP report, Rose's son, Forrest, believed that the book "depicted [Rose] as an unreasonable, petty state bureaucrat with a gripe." He found bullet entrance wounds on the officer's body: two on the right side of his chest, one in his right temple, and a superficial wound to his left rib. His examination found that Ruby's bullet entered Oswald's left side in the front part of the abdomen and caused damage to his spleen, stomach, aorta, vena cava, kidney, liver, diaphragm, and eleventh rib before coming to rest on his right side. Rose said he did not object to the exhumation. He was reported to have met Eddowes and to have had "great respect" for him. Rose began the autopsy on Ruby an hour after his death, and a report released the following month indicated that three doctors from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School assisted him in the post-mortem examination. The cause of death was determined to be a lung obstruction due to a massive blood clot. Rose indicated that the same type of cancer that affected Ruby's lungs was found in his brain, lymph nodes, liver, pancreas, pleura, ribs, and vertebra. He said that eight tumors were found in his brain, with the largest being three-fourths of an inch. Rose told reporters that he could not definitively answer whether or not the tumors were present in Ruby's brain at the time he shot Oswald, but he indicated metastasis from the lungs to the brain could not have occurred prior to 1964 since X-rays at the county jail that year revealed that his lungs were clear. He added that he found no evidence of epilepsy or other brain abnormalities. Rose stated that his death certificate would note cancer as a contributing cause, but that the clot would likely have killed Ruby even if he had not been weakened by cancer. ==Later life==

In 1966, Rose performed autopsies on the crew of American Flyers Flight 280 and testified about his findings in a hearing before the Civil Aeronautics Board. From 1968 until his retirement in early 1992, Rose taught pathology at the University of Iowa. In 1978, he served on the Forensic Pathology Panel of the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations. During their retirement, Rose and his wife worked as small claims court mediators in Johnson County, Iowa. Suffering from late-onset dementia and Parkinson's disease, Rose lost his long-term memory and the ability to converse over the last year of his life. He contracted a near-fatal case of pneumonia and was bed-ridden prior to his death. On May 1, 2012, Rose died at the Oaknoll Retirement Residence in Iowa City, Iowa from complications due to Parkinson's disease. ==Views==

Rose rejected the idea that there was a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy and he supported the Warren Commission's conclusion that a single gunman shot the President. The New York Times characterized him as "an outspoken opponent of capital punishment". According to The Des Moines Register, Rose described himself as a visitor' to the Mennonite faith". ==See also==