Raziel Gershater; radiologist (lovely Catherine Dunphy obit Toronto Star)
Hyfler/Rosner
November 16, 2006 Thursday
Radiologist shone through life tragedy
BYLINE: Catherine Dunphy, Toronto Star
When the doctor was dancing the tango, his eyes were closed,
his concentration intense and complete and joyous, his smile
contemplative.
"The hyper attention, that look on his face, it was really
extraordinary to watch, like a moving meditation," said
long-time friend Bernie Schiff, a former professor and until
recently, publisher of The Walrus magazine.
And so very much like the way radiologist Raziel Gershater,
67, conducted his entire life. His partner was his wife,
Jeanne. "She was the dancer," Schiff noted, "but Raziel was
the passionate tango scholar."
Two years ago, after Gershater had been operated on for the
first reoccurrence of his bladder cancer, the couple signed
up for a tango tour in Buenos Aires, dancing every day for
10 days. He had always loved music, buying his first
classical recording at age 13, never missing a tango
performance in Toronto, but this was a reaffirmation for
him. Life had not been easy since the unexplained death in
1999 of his only son, David, in Addis Ababa."
It was his greatest tragedy. He never transcended it but he
was a big enough man to encompass it," said his friend,
oncologist Mark Greenberg. "For a year or more he was raging
against it, but eventually in time allowing love and life
back into a David-less world."
"He wore that tragedy in his body, I think," said Schiff.
"Inside he may have felt he wanted to give up but he had a
family and he had friends and he persisted in style. Going
out dancing in Buenos Aires is hardly a defeated person."The
Gershaters had taken up the tango only a few years ago. They
preferred the Argentinian version, classical, formal,
elegant, complex. And they were good, very good, at it.
"They were learners but there were moments they were magical
to watch," Schiff said.
But then Gershater was very good at everything he did.
"Not just competency," said Greenberg. "Mastery. There was
nothing he did that he didn't know everything there was to
know.
"Squash? "The racquet grew out of his hand," Greenberg said.
Tennis? He was a regular at Mayfair West, three times a
week, for two-hour sessions starting at 6 a.m. - and his
backhand was gorgeous. He owned a collection of videos of
every major tennis match. Skiing? South African-born and
raised, Gershater took it up after watching Jean-Claude
Killy storm the 1968 Olympics. He took lessons, bought and
studied videos and was soon conquering double Black Diamond
hills.
"He took great pleasure in doing things well," said his
wife.
Passionate about his profession, he was chief radiologist at
North York General Hospital for 20 of his 35 years there and
the man responsible for first introducing three-dimensional
imaging and a computerized patient archiving and
communicating system - technology previously found in only a
few teaching hospitals - into community hospitals.
"He was a visionary, so aggressive in acquiring new
technology, sometimes even before the teaching hospitals,"
said Hassan Deif, a radiologist who worked with him at the
hospital and in their private practice for 25 years."He was
a broader thinker who was trying to prove a point that MRI
was a mainstream technology that should be in a community
hospital," said Ontario Association of Radiologists
executive director Ray Foley. "Today that's ho-hum, but 12
years ago this was almost revolutionary."
Gershater took his scholarly journals to bed with him at
night and would sit on the deck at his cottage reading three
medical books at a time."
In radiology you have to know everything about the whole
body and what procedures have been done and what should be
done. It's very inclusive. His career suited him," said
Jeanne.
His daughters were married and also successful in their
careers - Tal Gershater is a high school math teacher and
Elize Gershater a doctor who decided to follow in his
footsteps, much to his delight, and enrol in a radiology
residency.
His children were always his priority.
"He always told us we were the most important and that we
could call him any time at work. So we did," Tal recalled.
He was, she added, a confidante to many.Gershater had
everything, it seems - except an explanation for his son
David's death.
The 10 officials who met them at the airport back in '99 in
Ethiopia told them their son had jumped from his hotel room
and deflected all their questions. But nothing felt right
about their conclusion that their son had been suicidal and
unstable. It turned out it hadn't happened at the hotel
where their son had been staying, but instead at a rooftop
bar, where, they learned, some journalists were said to have
been pushed to their deaths, although the official version
was they, too, had jumped. In fact, it was known in Ethiopia
as an "execution post," Jeanne said.
David Gershater was 31, a freelance writer and social
activist, a young man with a probing intellect but scattered
interests who had never really found a place or profession
to stick to. He was researching, seeking the truth about
aspects of the war in Eritrea and the floppy disk containing
his writings had been stolen from his backpack a few days
before his death. His father had always wanted to know what
had really gone on.
A year after his son died, Gershater was diagnosed with the
bladder cancer that eventually killed him.
He worked until the beginning of this year. By the summer he
was very weak, but he was determined to live to meet Tal's
first child and his second grandchild."
He kept my due date as a mantra and made it to meet my son
David, and even managed to come out to the hospital the day
the baby was born," she recalled."Even though my Dad could
barely get out of bed, he somehow found the strength that
day to get down the stairs and into a cab to come and see
us. His smile that day lit up our hearts."Three weeks later,
on Sept.2, he died at home, listening to a new recording of
a piano concerto by Mozart.cdunphy @ thestar.ca
marilyn...@aol.com
Marilyn
