Last fall, the CIM lost one of its most loyal supporters when Charles Salisbury died on October 30, 2023, at the age of 83.
Salisbury enjoyed a highly successful career with global investment management firm T. Rowe Price, where he guided creation of the Fixed Income Division, launched two fixed income funds, and led management of the firm’s large institutional assets, pension funds and endowments.
“Charlie personified the meaning of serving our clients,” says Brian C. Rogers, former Chair and CIO of T. Rowe Price Associates. “He treated the individual investor with the same thoughtfulness and care as he did a billion-dollar client. Over the years, Charlie spent a lot of time on the road telling the T. Rowe Price story; traveling with him wore you down. He never stopped moving.”
While he had many passions, Salisbury’s highest priority was giving back through education and medical philanthropy. “While Charlie dressed with the reserved, elegant and formal manner of a successful business executive, he was beloved for his dry wit, generosity and deep interest in the lives of others,” says CIM Director David Hellmann. “His wisdom, smarts and philanthropy had a profoundly beneficial impact on multiple professors and research programs at Johns Hopkins.”
In 2008, Salisbury funded the Salisbury Family Professorship in Neurosurgery at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, where Henry Brem is director of neurosurgery. “Charlie was an extraordinary visionary and philanthropist,” says Brem. “He had a profound sense of gratitude of the exceptional care that he and his family had received, and dedicated his resources to being sure that such high-level care was available to others and indeed that there would be resources to continue to improve lifesaving medical treatments. He strove through his dedication and philanthropy to make the world a better place for everyone.”
At the CIM, Salisbury was among the among the earliest supporters of the CIM-supported Human Aging Project (HAP), which launched in 2021, when he and his family funded HAP Director Jeremy Walston as a Salisbury Family Foundation CIM Scholar.
“This early seed money from the Salisbury family and other donors has been crucial to the success of HAP,” says Hellmann. “It has allowed our researchers to embark on projects that have subsequently garnered millions of dollars in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health and other funding agencies.” The Salisbury family subsequently went on to support clinician-researchers, including Peter Abadir and Sean Leng, as Salisbury Family CIM/HAP Family Scholars.
Most recently, notes Hellmann, Salisbury’s generous support was key to the establishment of the David B. Hellmann M.D. Endowed Professorship. “I was thrilled to be honored with this endowed chair,” says Hellmann, “and I will forever be grateful to Charlie for believing in me.”
In addition to his wife of 57 years, Edith O’Donovan Gans, Salisbury is survived by two daughters, Anne O’Donovan Staley of Baltimore, Maryland, and Katherine Gans Ryan (Kevin Ryan) of Severna Park, Maryland: two grandchildren, Franklin E.W. Staley Jr. and Josephine O. Staley; and one brother, Thomas Salisbury.
