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Longtime Health Dept.
mentor Minette retiresPost-polio illness catches up with
By Helen Altonn
the 26-year volunteer
Star-BulletinDr. Henri Minette Jr., who worked for 56 years at the state Department of Health -- 26 of them for no pay -- says he's "retired and retiring."
He continued volunteering at the Health Department even as his health declined, forcing him to walk on crutches, then with a walker.
Minette, 83, said he had polio as a child and "is in the midst of post-polio syndrome."
He volunteered at the department "just because I felt like it." But, "It finally caught up with me. I got to the point where I couldn't maneuver with the walker."
"He was very helpful for a long time," said Dr. David Sasaki, state public health veterinarian who worked with Minette in the epidemiology branch. "He would come in religiously half a day every day except when he was not well or had a doctor's appointment."
Minette joined the department in 1944 after two years in the Army during World War II, working first in Hilo as a laboratory administrator. He rebuilt the lab and established the first leptospirosis diagnostic laboratory in the state.
(Leptospirosis is a bacterial infection transmitted to humans through exposure to infected-animal urine in mud or fresh river or stream water.)
Minette moved to Honolulu in 1969 as chief of the department's laboratories branch. In 1971 he was appointed the Department of Health's first deputy director of environmental health.
He held that position until 1974, when he said a change in governors forced him to "retire" from his salaried position.
"I asked if there was anything else I could do around there, and I went to epidemiology," he said.
He pursued research in salmonellosis and leptospirosis, answered immunization-related telephone requests and was co-chairman of the department's Leptospirosis Ad-Hoc Committee.
He said he did "anything that needed to be done at that point. ... Having been in the department a number of years, I had some old information I could dredge up."
State Health Director Bruce Anderson said Minette was a mentor to many, including himself.
"His great commitment to laboratory science, studies of infectious diseases and dedication to the DOH will be sorely missed," Anderson said. "The department will always be grateful beneficiaries of Hank's caring concerns for the health of all of our citizens."
Sasaki said Minette "followed the literature and was involved with studies we did. He advised us and helped us. ... He wrote articles for publication of work others had done and didn't take credit for them. He wrote them and published them, but his name wasn't on the papers."
Minette was a member of seven professional societies and published 19 articles in scientific and medical journals.
