Jody Wlodarski Passen, left, stands with her life-long friend, Erin Hennessy Cockrell, at Cockrell’s induction into the Brookfield Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame.
This story is part of a series on the 2024 inductees into the Brookfield Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame.
In the 1980s, when the Soviet Union was still around, Erin Hennessey Cockrell was fascinated with that country and the Cold War. She even spent a summer in Russia as part of an exchange student program.
With her desire to get out of Brookfield and interests in languages, foreign relations and travel, Cockrell enrolled at American University in Washington to study international relations. “I wanted to become an international relations person of some sort,” said the 1992 graduate of Brookfield High.
However, “I quickly learned how easy it was to get swallowed up in all the hustle and bustle,” Cockrell said, and she developed a distaste for the politics inherent in international relations.
So, what else could she do? She thought of medicine, a career path that she had shied away from because her mother, Sue, was a nurse and had discouraged thoughts of the medical field.
“I wanted nothing of the sort,” Cockrell said of medicine. “I just didn’t want to go that route. But, I had to do some volunteer work along the way, at some hospitals in Washington, D.C. I always loved science. It was something I was good at. I wasn’t any good at writing. I wasn’t good at public speaking. I quickly changed paths and I thought, ‘You know, I might really enjoy medicine.’”
Transferring to Case Western and then Ohio State to complete her undergraduate degree, she studied osteopathic medicine at Ohio University, graduating in 2000. Initially interested in becoming a family practitioner, she decided to specialize in pediatric hematology and oncology.
“I fell in love with the families,” Cockrell said. “ I saw the continuity and it was challenging and it’s always changing.”
After stints at Akron Children’s Hospital and what is now University Hospitals in Cleveland, she moved to Tampa to work for St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital, which is part of BayCare Health System. She runs one of 140 hemophilia treatment centers in the country.
“We see kids and adults with bleeding and clotting disorders, and I still see kids with cancer diagnoses,” Cockrell said.
Cockrell particularly loves treating children.
“Kids are just so resilient,” she said. “They don’t complain, if you can get them to a point where they’re happy and they can play. They just go with it, most of the time.”
Medicine has made a lot of progress with certain cancers, she said. “The treatments now are getting away from standard chemotherapy drugs and into medications that are made to target specific parts of the cancer. A lot less side effects.”
Dealing with the losses remains “challenging,” and time and experience have not lessened the impact on her, she said.
“Fortunately, in pediatrics, we still have a majority of success stories,” Cockrell said. “The cure rates are getting higher and higher. That’s encouraging and that’s where a lot of the satisfaction comes from. Even in the kids that pass away, it’s still remarkable to see the resilience they have. Every family handles it differently, but I’ve seen some amazing families get through this.”
“I love what I do,” she said. “I wouldn’t change it. There’s always some frustrations along the way. What’s most important is to find your passion, what fulfills you, what, at the end of the day, makes you come home and say, ‘I really feel good about what I do.’ To me, most of all, it’s about helping others.”
