Michael English; Hospital Attorney, Administrator

Michael Joseph English, 60, an attorney and former chief administrative officer at St. Elizabeths Hospital, died of cancer April 6 at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Del.

Mr. English was born in Coventry, Conn., and grew up in Hawthorne, N.Y. He received a bachelor's degree in 1970 and a law degree in 1974, both from Georgetown University, and shortly afterward began his career as a lawyer and hospital administrator at St. Elizabeths.

He always knew he wanted to do public service law, his wife recalled, and had worked in pretrial diversion during law school. "St. Elizabeths was a perfect match," she said.

During his first eight years at the hospital, the District's largest mental-health facility, he was a senior attorney in the legal adviser's office. He successfully represented the hospital in a variety of cases, including medical malpractice and class-action cases brought on behalf of hospital patients.

He played a pivotal role in orchestrating the federal defense of the landmark Dixon v. Williams case, filed in 1974 to deinstitutionalize the long-term patient population at St. Elizabeths. He helped develop plans to implement the 1975 federal court mandate for long-term residents to be redirected into community-based treatment programs.

"He had a tremendous feel for how to put together big projects," said Dr. Bernard Arons, a psychiatrist who worked with Mr. English at St. Elizabeths and later at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in the Department of Health and Human Services.

Arons said that the court mandate deinstitutionalizing St. Elizabeths patients required Mr. English to satisfy a number of interested parties, not only the court but also labor unions, the District government, patient advocates and mental health professionals.

Mr. English became the hospital's chief administrative officer in 1983. Four years later, when control of St. Elizabeths was transferred from the federal Department of Health and Human Services to the District government, he continued as the chief operating officer of the new Commission on Mental Health Services. The commission combined the previously federal mental health programs with the District's community mental health system.

"Mike genuinely liked the patients," said Carol Rest-Mincberg, a former colleague. "He valued them as human beings and reminded us they deserved the same dignity that any of us would want."

In the early 1990s, he returned to the federal government, becoming director of the Division of Services and Systems Improvement in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. He also served on the mental health and substance abuse working group headed by Tipper Gore.

In the wake of fatal shootings at Columbine High School and other campuses around the nation, he designed a grant program, the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative, that brought together the Justice, Education and Health and Human Services departments to focus on the role of mental health in addressing school violence.

Arons noted that it was yet another example of his former colleague's ability to meld a program with a number of complex parts and often competing interests.

Mr. English, who retired in 2003, was an ardent reader, world traveler, craftsman, photographer, philatelist, hiker, golfer and cook.

Survivors include his wife of 34 years, Maureen Perroti English of Rehoboth Beach; a daughter, Jennifer English Lynch of Dickerson; his mother, Casmera English of Hopedale, Mass.; two brothers; a sister; and two grandchildren.