George Lazarus, who was to pediatrics what Peter Scardino is to prostate surgery, died suddenly on January 20 from a cardiac arrest.
He was the best of us: smart (summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa), selfless, generous, dedicated, compassionate, loyal, loving, kind, and a guy you could always trust in a pinch. Integrity could have been his middle name.
“George was my classmate, and in recent years we became close friends,” says Bob Leahy. “I always enjoyed our conversations, his laughter, his wisdom, and his dedication to helping everyone he came in contact with. And he loved to tell stories. He was a true mensch. We will miss him.”
“I am heartbroken,” says Jorge Dominguez. “He was a wonderful friend to me and to many others.” Don Pierce says, “This is a terrible loss on so many levels.” Bob Lehrer says, “George was one of the most respected members of our class, not least for his consistent decency and courtesy.” Mike Orlansky adds, “George was an authentic lifelong New Yorker, justly proud of his city, his family, and Yale. We met up at every class reunion, and George never lost his inquisitive spirit and his sunny, uplifting presence. It was a privilege and pleasure to know him.” And Norm Bender says, “While I have heard the phrase ‘larger than life’ many times, an even better phrase would apply to George: He was happier than life.”
Yes, he was, and with good reason. While at Yale he met his future wife, Shelly Braff, a sophomore at Smith who rose to the top in her career, as he did in his, becoming Chairman of the prestigious Ogilvy & Mather advertising agency. They loved each other very much – Shelly calls him “my love and my life” – and their three kids and seven grandkids have been an unmitigated joy. George was a faithful attendee at their plays, dance recitals and baseball games, and he looked forward every year to the family’s annual skiing trips to Vail. In the summertime he loved to just relax and read on the beach.
He and Shelly were very generous to Yale, including (but not limited to) sponsoring the Yale Sustainable Food Project, the beginning of the radical transformation from the Yale food we knew in our day, which could be charitably characterized as mediocre, to the delicious and healthy fare today’s students feast on.
They bought a town house on the upper East Side and decided to live above the store, turning the ground floor into the doctor’s office and the upper three stories into their living quarters.
A couple of days after he retired from his beloved career in pediatrics, I called him and said, “How’s retirement?”
“Great!” he answered. “I had a full night’s sleep last night for the first time in 40 years because I wasn’t tossing and turning all night, worrying about my patients!”
That was George through and through. He loved them, and they loved him right back. Many of them dug in their heels when they reached their early twenties and flat-out refused to switch to a doctor who specialized in treating adults.
One of them was Catherine (Cat, for short) MacRae, who told her mother, “I will never leave Dr. Lazarus.” To quote the New York Times, “She was beautiful and funny, inexhaustibly thoughtful and charmingly self-deprecating.” After graduating magna cum laude from Princeton, she landed her dream job as a stock analyst at Fred Alger Management in Manhattan. And the frosting on the cake? She had just gotten engaged to be married.
Unfortunately, that dream job was on the 93rd floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11. She never had a chance. George mourned her for the rest of his life.
Despite that deep sadness, George still had a wonderful life, both personally and professionally. He had the satisfaction of doing something he truly loved and knowing he was very good at it, like Peter Scardino in prostate surgery, Bob Leahy in cognitive therapy, and Maury Yeston and John Mauceri in music. After spending two years as a Major in the Air Force, he spent the next forty healing children and teaching/mentoring the next generation of doctors. He taught at his old medical school, Columbia University College of Physicians of Surgeons (one of his most memorable lectures was how to do a physical exam on a newborn baby), interviewed applicants, and hosted a party every year for those who were admitted.
The nurseries at Columbia’s Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital were named after him in honor of his lifetime of work with patients, doctors, children and staff. He also was Chief Resident at Columbia Presbyterian’s Babies Hospital and served on the boards of the New York Stem Cell Foundation, Sanctuary for Families, and Jacob’s Pillow. And the New York Police named him an Honorary Police Surgeon to thank him for his more than twenty years of service to the department.
“As much as almost anyone I knew at Yale, I was always most happy to see George,” says Rob Wood. “So positive, so friend-affirming, decent, kind, fully human, focused, disciplined in studies. One of the things I particularly liked about him was his down to earth embrace of absolutely everyone – especially, but not only, in the Jewish/Christian sense of the underdog, the downtrodden, the destitute. In short, I love George, although I wouldn’t have called it that back then. He represented so much goodness to me, and to so many, and to Yale. God Rest his gentle soul, and may God be kind to Shelly and the kids in their soul-grieving time.”
I’m not very religious myself; but George’s passing sure makes me hope there really is a heaven, because if anyone deserves to spend eternity in paradise, it’s him.
And I hope the first face he sees is Cat MacRae’s.