Obituary

Dr. Robert Berger

Mon, 06/27/2016 - 3:15pm

Dr. Robert L. Berger died January 1, 2016 at the age of 86 of heart disease. He lived in Brookline, Massachusetts and visited Southport Island during summers with his wife’s family for many years. He will be remembered above all for his devotion to his family and his large circle of friends who became his extended family. He was humorous, witty and warm, and enjoyed reaching out to anyone to give advice or share a good story.

Dr. Berger was a Holocaust survivor from Debrecen, Hungary who survived the war by finding jobs in Budapest, using assumed names, and joining the resistance. Following liberation he went to Displaced Persons camps in Germany and Austria for two years until he finally was able to come to the U.S. in 1948 under the auspices of the Jewish Family and Children’s Services as a child survivor.

He arrived speaking no English but was determined to get an education, having learned you can lose all your worldly possessions but no one can take away your mind. He took a refresher course at Boston Latin for one year under the GI bill, earning enough credits to get into Harvard College the following year.

Medicine was his calling. He graduated from Boston University School of Medicine and went into cardiac surgery just as this new field was being developed. He became the chair of the Department of Cardiac Surgery at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital and later moved to Boston University Medical Center as their chief of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery. He ended his career at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in the Department of Pulmonary Surgery.

Throughout his career, patient care was his major focus. He developed a strong operating room team and over the years trained the most diverse cardiac residency program of its size in the country, including the first female African-American heart surgeon. Dr. Berger was on the cutting edge of heart surgery as the first surgeon in Boston to do a coronary bypass and the first to succeed in getting the Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) to work in critically ill patients. He also pioneered research on replacing the aortic valve through a catheter in the inguinal artery. This surgery is now used in humans 50 years later. He continued to teach and do research until the time of his death.

Dr. Berger also was instrumental in debunking the idea that the Nazi medical experiments done in the concentration camps during the war had any useful scientific value. There was controversy about whether it was ethical to use data from the cruel and deadly experiments performed on human subjects by the Nazis. Dr. Berger studied the data from their original sources found in the documents from the Nuremberg trials and demonstrated that the data had been falsified, unreliable, and unscientific, thus ending the ethical argument. His conclusion was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in May 1990.

Dr. Berger married Dr. Patricia Downs in 1971 on Southport. The couple met at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital when they both were seeing patients in the intensive care unit. He was very eager in his charming way to explain the details of his post-surgical patients to the new second year medical resident, Dr. Downs. Six months went by and Dr. Berger (as he was known to Dr. Downs) called for a date introducing himself on the phone as Bob Berger. She answered with hesitation “I don’t think I know you.” He replied “Well… Dr. Berger.” That was the beginning of a 46-year relationship.

He adored his two daughters, Ilana and Shana Berger. Family was incredibly important to him, and his daughters thought the world of him. They appreciated his frequent check in calls and miss hearing his sweet accent. He cared deeply about equity and justice, and he passed those values onto his daughters. He was amazing with babies and was thrilled to welcome his granddaughters Hannah and Rosie with total affection.

He enjoyed spending time on Southport and Boothbay with the Downs family and a great group of local friends. A two hour sail with a one hour snooze on Wildfire was his idea of a great afternoon. He was a foody and his favorite local spots were Bet’s Fish Fry, Brenda Tibbett’s Lobster Shop, and the Trevett General Store. He was a master at orchestrating family gatherings with a lobster bake.

Dr. Berger is survived by his wife, Patricia Downs Berger; his daughters, Shana Berger; Ilana Berger and her partner Eli Dueker and their daughters, Hannah and Rosie; his mother-in-law, Dr. Elinor Downs; his brother, Thomas Berger; his brother-in-law, Stephen Downs; many nieces and nephews in New York, Australia, Israel, Maryland and Maine; and many dear friends.