Robert Nolan, an advocate for ‘hundreds of thousands’ of children in Miami, dies at 94
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Early childhood, children healthcare advocate stories
Several leaders in early childhood education and children healthcare advocates have been featured in recent Miami Herald stories. Here are some of them.
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Robert Dale Nolan spent more than half a century advocating for the mental health needs and services of children in South Florida by directing the activities of the venerable Institute for Child & Family Health (ICFH).
Friends, colleagues and state officials will tell you of Nolan’s achievements in providing professional services to one of the most underserved populations in Miami-Dade and Broward through his programs.
“Throughout his career he was in the forefront of developing programs using a community-based approach,” said ICFH board of directors Vice President Stephen Makar in an email to the Miami Herald. “Bob was one of the wisest persons that I knew.”
“He made every situation an opportunity to help our community, to improve the system of care and to teach and mentor many clinicians in the mental health field whether they worked at the Children’s Psychiatric Center or ICFH or not,” said ICFH Chief Executive Officer Suzy Schumer.
But where did that passion to heal the youngest and most vulnerable come from?
Nolan, who died Oct. 28 at his Boynton Beach home at 94, would have told you that his empathy for children could have stemmed from his own difficult youth that included living in an orphanage.
A tough childhood
Born in Jacksonville on March 8, 1927, Nolan grew up with a mom who was ill and a father who was often out of work, Nolan told the Miami Herald in January 2012, a couple months after he received The Children’s Trust’s David Lawrence Jr. Champion for Children award — one of many honors he had received.
“Food was scarce so I spent some time in the Baptist Children’s Home,” Nolan told the Herald.
Hyperactive and struggling with vision problems, Nolan spent three years in first grade, dropped out in his sophomore year of high school, and enlisted in the Air Force during World War II where he served as a radio operator in Japan.
Becoming a child psychologist
While overseas at the end of the war, a career that changed the lives of thousands was born: the idea of one, anyway, and from an inauspicious activity.
“I was hanging with my buddies, smoking cigars and drinking beer,” Nolan told the Herald. “When they asked me what I wanted to do when I got home, I didn’t want to say, ‘Going back to high school’’ so I just said, ‘I want to be a child psychologist.’”
Of course, that would take formal education.
So after the war, Nolan passed his GED, earned his doctoral degree in psychology from Florida State University in 1959, and received post-doctoral training in child psychology at the Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School.
In 1962, Nolan joined the Institute for Child & Family Health when it was named the Children’s Psychiatric Center at Jackson and became its executive director in 1976 — a role he served for 35 years until his retirement in 2012. When he retired he said he must have seen “hundreds of thousands of children” over the years.
Makar, who started working with Nolan when he joined the ICFH board in 1986, details some of Nolan’s duties during his tenure.
“He worked tirelessly with the county and school board along with United Way and The Children’s Trust. He developed a program within a public school which the school system adopted which provides a positive and safe environment for the students who have the most social and emotional problems.”
Nolan, Makar said, “was the county spokesperson for the needs of the children and adolescents and gave them hope and valuable services when they needed it the most.”
Nolan’s programs include the Florida Association for Play Therapy that he founded with his wife, Janet Courtney-Nolan. Also, Linking Forces, a multiagency children’s mental health conference, and the ongoing All Aboard Program he co-founded with director Marta Fernandez that provides tutorial services for children and their families.
His work on behalf of the state’s children earned national attention.
Honors
When he was Florida’s governor, Jeb Bush awarded ICFH for Nolan’s inspired All Aboard Program.
In 2007, Nolan was presented with the Florida Association for Play Therapy’s Viola Brody Award to recognize his contributions in the field. In 2011, there was the David Lawrence Jr. Champion for Children award, named after the former Miami Herald publisher and early learning advocate.
“A man of the greatest decency. What a difference he made for children and families,” Lawrence, chair of the Children’s Movement of Florida, said.
In 2012, Harve Mogul presented Nolan with the Lifetime Achievement award from the United Way of Miami-Dade.
“There are people who want to intern at the agency from all over this country that would give their eye-teeth to spend a little time learning from him,” Mogul, the United Way of Miami-Dade’s former president, said in a Children’s Trust video made at the time of the presentation.
“Dr. Nolan was one of my mentors throughout the years long before I began working at ICFH,” CEO Suzy Schumer shared in an email to her colleagues at the organization. “He played a prominent role in helping to shape policies pertaining to children’s mental health in Florida.” He took ICFH “from a few employees serving a handful of children to growing the organization exponentially.”
One of the biggest obstacles in running a child mental health agency, even one as recognized as the Institute for Child & Family Health that dates back to 1945, is securing funding.
“Bob’s close relationship with state legislators helped advance funding for the needs of children,” Makar said. “Bob assured our staff of over 300 that we would do whatever was necessary to continue to service the mental health needs of the children of our community. I believe that philosophy was always the first and foremost priory that Bob instilled into every one of our employees. Bob always stated that ‘we are here to serve the mental health needs of any child who requires service.’”
Play therapy
Nolan, who loved metal detecting and wood working with his own son, Steve, and who shared his daughter Sue’s affection for animals, as well as gardening — “his scrumptious vegetables rivaled those of any farmer,” his family said — seized on the notion of play therapy.
Play therapy, Nolan explained to the Herald when he retired, is a study “based upon the theory that children communicate, particularly at certain ages, better through play than they do through words. They may not even be able to vocalize what it is that’s bothering them, but they can sure show you in their play.”
He once cited an example of a 5-year-old girl whose parents came to him when they grew worried about changes in her behavior. At a session, he saw the girl put a family of dolls on the edge of a bucket of water and watched her pluck the baby doll out of the water — in effect, rescuing the toy.
“Turns out the parents just had a new baby and she was feeling left out,” Nolan told the Herald. “She was able to identify herself as the big sister. The play is what helped her; she walked out and was happy again.”
Survivors, services
Nolan’s survivors include his wife Janet Courtney-Nolan; his children Susan and Steven; grandchildren Amber, Scott and Robert; great-grandchildren Vana and Kathryn, and stepsons Jesse and Austin.
A celebration of life will be held at 1 p.m. Dec. 11 at Providence Road Church, 2732 SW 32nd Ave., Miami.
This story was originally published November 13, 2021 at 3:42 PM.
