Otis Bowen Dies At 95; Former Indiana Governor And Reagan Health Secretary Leaves Behind Legacy Of His Fight Against AIDS

Otis R. Bowen, the family doctor and former two-term governor of Indiana who as secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services pioneered public HIV education efforts, died on Saturday at a nursing home in Indiana, according to AP News. He was 95. Current Indiana Governor Mike Pence announced the death in a statement which did not make clear the cause of death.

Bowen was appointed to the position at the Department of Health by then-President Ronald Reagan in December of 1985, with the HIV/AIDS epidemic at its height. He spearheaded public education efforts about the disease, distributing pamphlets with information on how to avoid contracting the disease to 107 million households. At a 1987 news conference, he also gave a piece of advice which has become a familiar one in sex education programs across the United States:

"Remember," he said, "when a person has sex, they're not just having it with that partner, they're having it with everybody that partner had it with for the past 10 years."

The Washington Post reported that Bowen saw his greatest accomplishment at the Department of Health and Human Services as his efforts in crafting a 1988 bill which expanded Medicare coverage to the elderly for catastrophic illnesses, though the provision was repealed by Congress a year later following complaints from retirees who already had coverage and higher-income people who were forced to pay a surtax financing two-thirds of the program.

Otis Bowen (1918, Rochester, Indiana) received a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Indiana University in 1939, graduated from the university's medical school three years later, and served in the Pacific in World War II as part of the Army Medical Corps, according to the Post. After the war ended, he set up a small family medical practice and remained there until being elected county coroner in 1952. In 1956 he was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives and in 1972 as governor.

Bowen had four children with his first wife, Beth, who died of cancer in 1981 shortly after her husband's second term as governor ended. Their son, Robert, ran unsuccessfully for Indiana secretary of state in 1986.

In 1981 Bowen married Rose Hochstetler, a widow from Bremen, Indiana, the town where he ran his pre-public service medical practice. He moved with her back to Bremen in 1989 after completing his post at the Department of Health and Human Services. She died of cancer two years later.

Bowen married for a final time in 1993, to Carol Mikesell, a former patient of his whom he had helped deliver two of her children.