Rose Christine Gangarosa

Rose Christine Gangarosa died peacefully at her home in Stone Mountain, Georgia, at the age of 101. A classically trained pianist, she had been married to Eugene John “Gene” Gangarosa for 72 years, until his death in 2022 at age 96.

Rose Salamone was born December 31, 1924, on Miller Street in Rochester, New York, the eighth of ten children of a prosperous neighborhood barber. When she was twelve, her father built her a piano studio in the backyard. She went on to study at the Eastman School of Music and Nazareth College, where she became the first student to major in piano performance, teaching piano until she married.

She and Gene knew each other as children on the same block but did not begin dating until he returned from World War II and started medical school. They married on August 19, 1950, and over the next seven decades she followed him from Rochester to Honolulu, to Lahore, to Atlanta, to Beirut, and finally back to Atlanta. She gave him crucial support as he built his career at CDC and founded two schools of public health, at the American University of Beirut and at Emory University. As benefactors of the Rollins School of Public Health, the CDC Foundation, the Gangarosa Department of Environmental Health, and the College of Charleston, the two of them followed with interest the students supported by their global field experience fund. Rose sat on the board of the Gangarosa International Health Foundation that Gene founded.

In retirement, she serenaded Gene during his afternoon naps on her Steinway grand piano; she admitted to making many mistakes, but he swore he never heard one. She practiced a few hours most days, tapering off after Gene’s death, kept up with the news as a fiery advocate for social justice, and did the daily crossword in ink.

As far as is known, she outlived every friend from her childhood. The title of Gene’s autobiography, “But now they are angels,” came from words his mother’s priest offered after four of her first five children died in infancy, long before Gene was born. Gene and Rose have now joined them.

Rose is survived by her sons, Raymond Eugene, Eugene John Jr. and his wife Marjorie Lynn, and Paul Charles; her grandchildren Megan Elizabeth, Tyler Ray, and Justin Eugene; her great-granddaughter Isabella Rose; and numerous nieces, nephews, and their children. She was predeceased by her husband Gene and her daughter, Margaret “Peggy” Gangarosa, a pathologist who died in 2012.

Memorial services (dates TBD) will be held in Atlanta at Holy Cross Church, 3773 Chamblee-Tucker Road; at the Rollins School of Public Health, 1518 Clifton Road NE; and in Rochester, NY, where Rose’s, Gene’s, and Peggy’s ashes will be buried in the Salamone family plot at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery.

In Rose Gangarosa’s memory, gifts may be made to the Gangarosa Department of Environmental Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, 1762 Clifton Road NE, Suite 1400, Atlanta, GA 30322-4001.