Dr. Oscar Ephraim Starobin

Dr. Oscar Ephraim Starobin, MD, died peacefully at his home in Topsham, Maine on January 27, at the age of 97. These remarks are from the eulogy given at his funeral by his eldest son, Paul, a resident of Orleans.
Ok, on Dad. When I heard about his stroke, his second stroke, this one well into his nineties, I grabbed one of his records I had absconded with some time back. Long story there. Anyway, Dad loved music. Loved music! Brahms, Beethoven…I put Brahms 1st, Toscanini conducting, on the turntable, and in the 4th movement, when the French horn sounded, announcing that sublime melody, I felt Dad was listening with me.
   Relaxation isn’t maybe the first word that comes to mind on Dad. Medicine was a calling for him—a true vocation. And after Harvard College, Harvard Medical School and a residency in cardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Dad, the son of a tailor, could have had a career in Boston medicine. Instead, he returned to his hometown of Worcester, in central Massachusetts. Sometimes it seemed that everyone in Worcester with a heart problem knew my father. “Hi Doctor” was the greeting at the Armenian restaurant, the car dealership, the hardware store, the elementary school, the newspaper where his patients included the executive editor. The phone rang at the house in the middle of the night—that was for Dad. A patient needing his attention. Off he went.
But he had his music. And his cameras. He had a darkroom at home and taught my sister Leslie how to develop photographs. And sailing on the Sunfish—he taught me to sail in an inlet of Popponesset Bay. And clam digging, with my brother Brad and me on the mud flats. We’d take our bucket of steamers back and Dad would make a clam chowder—the only thing I ever saw him cook. Sometimes a Bruins game at the old Boston Garden. Once, before the game, we ducked into a McDonald’s for a bite. Dad saw a guy that I guess looked homeless and bought an extra hamburger and gave it to him, without a word.
It says it all in Psalm 112: “The righteous man will be forever remembered.” I’ll see you on the waters, Dad.