Howard A. Rusk was born April 9, 1901 in Brookfield, Mo. the son of Michael Yost Rusk, and Augusta Eastin Shipp Rusk. He passed away at the age of 88 on November 4, 1989 in Manhattan, New York.

He graduated from Brookfield High School and earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Missouri and an M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania's medical school in 1925.

From 1926 to 1942, Dr. Rusk practiced as a specialist in internal medicine in St. Louis. He also became associate chief of staff at St. Luke's Hospital in St. Louis and joined the medical school faculty of Washington University in that city.

Dr. Rusk became a pioneer in the rehabilitation of the physically disabled in the United States and many other countries after finding new ways to help badly wounded airmen in World War II.

A genial, strapping Missourian, he developed many rehabilitation techniques that became part of standard medical practice throughout the world. He is considered the originator of what came to be known as rehabilitation medicine.

Dr. Rusk was really the father of comprehensive rehabilition,'' Dr. Frederic J. Kottke, emeritus professor in the department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Minnesota Medical School, said yesterday, ''He was the first to recognize, from a professional standpoint, the need to restore people to a high quality of life.''

For five decades, Dr. Rusk's passionate concern was, as he put it in a 1982 interview, ''what happens to severely disabled people after the stitches are out and the fever is down.'' Then, he said, the crucial task was to ''take them back into the best lives they can live with what they have left''.

That positive attitude brought hope to vast numbers of the disabled people around the world and earned him the grateful nickname Dr. Live-Again.'' Founded Institute at N.Y.U. Dr. Rusk propounded many of his ideas on rehabilitation and other medical topics as a columnist of The New York Times, which he joined as a part-time associate editor. They appeared weekly from 1946 to 1969.

After devising rehabilitation programs for the Army Air Force during the war, Dr. Rusk founded the Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at New York University, using more than $1 million donated in 1948 by Bernard Baruch.

Widely known simply as the Rusk Institute, it is now named the Howard A. Rusk Institute of Rehabiitation Medicine. It works with disabled in-patients, sending a high percentage on to school or gainful work and carries on many related activities with both in-patients and out-patients. Dr. Rusk served as its director until 1978, when he became a distinguished university professor of New York University.

He also served as president of the World Rehabilitation Fund from 1955, when he founded it, until 1982, when he was succeeded by his son Howard A. Rusk Jr., who still holds the post. Dr. Rusk was chairman from that time on. Through the fund, the institute has drawn up programs for professionals in 150 countries and has trained more than 6,000 doctors, psychologists and other specialists in advanced rehabilitation techniques. In addition, as a direct result of the fund's efforts, more than four million people have been fitted with artificial limbs and braces.

Dr. Rusk also founded the world's first comprehensive medical-training program in rehabilitation: the Department of Rehabilitation at New York University's medical school. He headed the department from 1946 to 1980.

Through his medical work, writing, teaching, speaking, fund raising and informal salesmanship, Dr. Rusk did much to win widespread acceptance of his view that treatment should be for the disabled patient as a ''whole person'' - not merely for his or her specific afflictions - and that the patient should be made ready to play a role in the general community.

He also advised nine presidents and founded a Rehabilitation Institute at Bellevue Hospital. Over the years, he was variously a consultant on rehabilitation to the Veterans Administration, the United Nations Secretariat, and the New York City Department of Hospitals, a member of the city's Board of Hospitalsand president of the International Society for the Welfare of Cripples.

Dr. Rusk's wartime work with the disabled was spurred by the anguish he felt, as the officer in charge of the Army Air Force Convalescent Training Program, when, as he later recalled, ''wounded boys from the battlefield began being packed into hospitals by the planeload.''

''Suddenly we were faced with men with broken bodies and, all too often, broken spirit,'' he wrote in his 1972 autobiography, ''A World to Care For''.

Spurred by what he saw, he worked out a program of retraining, reconditioning and psychological readjustment, and it came into widespread use during the war. Its aim was to reduce patients' convalescence time and to prepare many of them to return to military duty effectively.

After the war, Dr. Rusk began his decades as a columnist for The Times at the invitation of its then publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the father of its present publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger.

Mr. Rusk wrote in his autobiography that the elder Mr. Sulzberger was ''a sensitive man and especially concerned about rehabilitation problems because he was having a most difficult and painful time himself with arthritis of the hands.''

''He could endure pain,'' Dr. Rusk went on, ''but he was very much bothered by a recurring dream in which he was a pianist. His hands would suddenly become disabled, and he could no longer play the piano and earn a living. He developed as a result of this dream a great empathy for those whose handicaps might deprive them of their means of livelihood, and he was therefore always eager to help us fulfill our aims.''

And so, on a part-time basis, Dr. Rusk began writing his column, initially under the heading ''Rehabilitation'' in a part of the Sunday newspaper set aside for ''News of the Veteran.'' He had the title of associate editor of The Times until 1964, when he became a contributing editor. He remained a regular weekly columnist until 1969 and continued to be a contributing editor, and to write for The Times, on into the 1970's.

Over the years, Dr. Rusk had his share of famous patients. They included Joseph P. Kennedy, the father of President John F. Kennedy; Roy Campanella, the baseball player; Vincent Lopez, the bandleader; and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

Dr. Rusk's columns, which were sprinkled with anecdotes about his patients, covered many subjects, ranging from the dangers of self-medication to the issue of the extent of napalm wounds in South Vietnam's civilian populace.

He was sent to Vietnam by President Lyndon B. Johnson with the assignment of coordinating relief program. He headed a group of physicians that toured hospitals in the country and concluded that napalm had caused only a negligible number of civilian casualties. Most burn cases, the commission reported, had been caused by the improper use of gasoline for cooking or illumination.

Outside the realm of rehabilitation, Dr. Rusk was an early advocate of enlarging public-health programs for the country's growing numbers of elderly people, including programs for those affected by senility.

He was also, from 1962 to 1967, a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, and he served a term as president of the International Society for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled.

In addition to his 1972 autobiography, the books which he wrote or co-authored were ''New Hope for the Handicapped'' (1949), ''Living with a Disability'' (1953), and three works that appeared in 1958: ''Rehabilitation Medicine,'' ''Cardiovascular Rehabilitation'' and ''Rehabilitation of the Cardiovascular Patient.''

Dr. Rusk had honorary degrees from the University of Missouri and a score of other institutions in this country and abroad. He won three Albert Lasker Awards - one for work in the public health field, two for services for the physically disabled - the Distinguished Service Medal, the French Legion of Honor and numerous other decorations and awards.

The Howard A. Rusk Respiratory Center at Goldwater Memorial Hospital on Roosevelt Island was named in his honor, as was a professorship at N.Y.U., the Howard A. Rusk Chair in Rehabilitation Research.

After devising rehabilitation programs for the Army Air Force during the war, Dr. Rusk founded the Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at New York University, using more than $1 million donated in 1948 by Bernard Baruch.

Widely known simply as the Rusk Institute, it is now named the Howard A. Rusk Institute of Rehabiitation Medicine. It works with disabled in-patients, sending a high percentage on to school or gainful work and carries on many related activities with both in-patients and out-patients. Dr. Rusk served as its director until 1978, when he became a distinguished university professor of New York University.

He also served as president of the World Rehabilitation Fund from 1955, when he founded it, until 1982, when he was succeeded by his son Howard A. Rusk Jr., who still holds the post. Dr. Rusk was chairman from that time on. Through the fund, the institute has drawn up programs for professionals in 150 countries and has trained more than 6,000 doctors, psychologists and other specialists in advanced rehabilitation techniques. In addition, as a direct result of the fund's efforts, more than four million people have been fitted with artificial limbs and braces. Dr. Rusk also founded the world's first comprehensive medical-training program in rehabilitation: the Department of Rehabilitation at New York University's medical school. He headed the department from 1946 to 1980. Treatment of 'Whole Person' Through his medical work, writing, teaching, speaking, fund raising and informal salesmanship, Dr. Rusk did much to win widespread acceptance of his view that treatment should be for the disabled patient as a ''whole person'' - not merely for his or her specific afflictions - and that the patient should be made ready to play a role in the general community.