“No, Dr. Harry,” the nurse said. “Not right now.”
He was in doctor mode, which many of the 15,000-some families he helped care for in Dayton for nearly 40 years would understand. At 88 years of age and with an undiagnosed form of dementia, he remained on call.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be in my room.”
Dr. Harry, as his patients came to know him, was born in Forney, Texas, but grew up in Taos, N.M.
After his parents divorced, he took the name of his mother rather than his father, whose surname was Solomon, according to Dr. Graubarth’s wife, Sally.
He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Tulane University Medical School in 1945, served in the U.S. Naval Reserve and entered pediatrics practice with an uncle in New Orleans. He later worked at Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati and started the pediatrics program at Ohio University.
In 1953, he moved to Dayton, starting a pediatrics practice, and in 1960, brought in Dr. John Bloom. The pair were together nearly 30 years.
Both doctors had a hand in helping Dayton’s Children’s Medical Center grow from a polio clinic. Each was a chief of staff there, eventually moving their primary office from Salem Avenue to the hospital, and later opening satellite offices in Centerville and Beavercreek.
“He was a good friend and excellent doctor,” Dr. Bloom said. “He cared a lot for his patients.”
Sally Huber first met Dr. Harry when she took her sons to see Dr. Bloom, and as one observer noted, “It was like ‘Harry met Sally.’ Both were divorced, and even though she was younger, the romance was fun to watch.”
The courtship didn’t last long. Dr. Harry called for his first date on Nov. 1, 1978, and the two were married Dec. 30.
“This would have been our 32nd year,” Sally said. “We had quite a rousing good time.”
Dr. Harry retired from his Dayton practice in 1992, and he and Sally moved to Taos, where he was a volunteer at the Indian Health Center for 11 years, becoming as revered there as he was in Dayton.
Dr. Harry and Sally moved to central Florida in 2004, in part for “a new adventure,” in part to be closer to their children.
The parents and patients he left behind in Dayton will not forget.
“He was wonderful,” Mary Sue Kessler said. “He had an old-fashioned approach. He had all the time in the world for you. He devoted his entire time to you and your kids.”
“I loved him,” Rose Dwight said. “He was the dearest thing. When our oldest girl decided she wanted to be a doctor but didn’t know what to do, I told her to call Dr. Harry. He gave her advice, and she’s now a psychiatrist in Los Angeles.”
“He really was a man ahead of his time,” Robin Moore said. “I always remembered when I was older and he opened my chart, and there were valentines in there we would send him, and pictures we colored. It was all kind of your personal record.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2157 or mkatz@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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