William Cordell Mason, EdD, FACHE, and CEO and president emeritus of Baptist Health, died July 2, 2024. He was 86.
Jacksonville knew him as “Mr. Baptist,” with his 20 years as president and chief executive officer of Baptist Medical Center and Baptist Health. He joined Baptist in 1978 and during his time there, saw its expansion to include new hospitals in Fernandina Beach, Jacksonville Beach, Baptist South, Wolfson Children’s Hospital, and helped to plan the future growth and expansion of the system that continues to dominate market share.
His formal career in health administration began as a foreign service officer in the U.S. State Department in the 1960s, when he was assigned to the U.S. Agency for International Development. He lived in several Asian countries, principally Vietnam, where he was aide de camp to Ellsworth Bunker, U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, stationed in the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. His assignment included planning and developing a new medical school and teaching hospital for the Vietnamese government.
Two lifetime ambitions arose from that time: the establishment of Wolfson Children’s Hospital in Jacksonville, and the Life Flight Helicopter Service of Baptist Medical Center. Both came directly from his involvement in the Vietnam War and the sight of the thousands of maimed and wounded children, and the transportation of the injured and dead soldiers from the Southeast Asian jungles to combat field hospitals.
After leaving the State Department in 1969, he earned a master’s degree in Health Administration from Trinity University in San Antonio, and then went to Africa during the early 1970s as president and CEO of the Baptist Medical Center in Mbeya, Tanzania, East Africa.
After four years in Africa, he was assigned the responsibility of designing and building another new Baptist Medical Center in the city of Bangalore in southern India, where he lived for another four years. He and his family returned to the U.S. in 1978, where he became affiliated with Baptist Health in Jacksonville. In 1993, he married Juliette Baldwin Woodruff.
Upon retirement in 1998, he became chairman of the boards of Baptist Health and Baptist Health Foundation. After teaching at UNF for several years with a joint appointment in the College of Health and the College of Business, he spent five years as president of the FSCJ Foundation and completed a scholarship endowment campaign. He retired from the boards of Baptist Health, Baptist Medical Center, and Wolfson Children’s Hospital after 35 years, while continuing to be deeply involved in the Baptist Health Foundation.
He is survived by his wife, Juliette Baldwin Mason, and his sister, Melinda Mason Means (Noble) of Duncan, OK; and by his brothers-in-law, Norman Lee Shaheen, San Antonio, TX; Richard Oran Baldwin, Jr., Winter Park, FL; and James Robert Baldwin, New Smyrna Beach, FL. He is also survived by three children and two stepsons: Michael Cordell Mason (Deneice), Dallas, TX; Rebecca Mason Malone (Jay), South Bend, IN; Holly Melissa Mason (Chris Nelson), Asheville, NC.; Graham Thomas Woodruff (Marcus Franklin), Jacksonville, FL; and Richard Jeffries Woodruff (Caelyn Casanova), San Francisco, CA. He has 18 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
