Tribute to my Father

Nathan Rifkinson, MD

May 23, 1912 - March 21, 2010

Delivered to those who came to pay their respects

On the occasion of my father's passing, I want to say some things about him &, frankly, it is hard to know where to begin as I have so many mixed emotions.

Yes, he was my father & I knew him better than he thought I did. But I also have to share this father thing with many of you in this room which is a great honor.
 

It is a sad day but I prefer to remember the more interesting things about my father. He was -- to say the least -- a complicated man who presented a number of mixed messages to all of us. And all of us had to get used to these and other contradictions to understand who he really was.

My father was an only child but he grew up amongst a group of cousins. He loved that life with his cousins. They played amongst the push carts in the streets of New York City & they traveled together to the countryside during the summers in a rickety model "A" Ford. They got into fights, had girlfriends and boyfriends, grew up and grew apart. But of that group of cousins, my father was the only one who became a professional.

His cousins knew him as Natie. His wife, his many friends & colleagues knew him as Nathan, He was dad for me, daddy for Stephanie, grandpa to the two young ladies sitting there in the front row & Dr. Rifkinson to some of you.

After working his way through college & medical school, finishing his internships & residency, my father wandered in his early medical years: first in general medicine then in public health, finally as a pathologist at the Bayamon District Hospital.

But the Government of Puerto Rico offered him the biggest opportunity of his life: a three year fellowship to Barnes Hospital in St Louis Missouri, to study Neurosurgery under the great Dr. Sachs, himself a student of Harvey Cushing, the father of modern Neurosurgery. So off he went, me & my mother, too.

When we returned from St. Louis -- by that time I was 5 & Stephanie wasn't....yet... the government   provided us a half a house to live in. The other half was occupied by Doctora Janner, a psychiatrist. The house was situated between the insane asylum & the prison in Rio Piedras, not the most picturesque location but my father was grateful.

I learned to drive down the long entrance to the insane asylum sitting on my father's lap & we had prisoners doing yard work.

In 1950, when the Independentista revolution broke out, much of the traffic from the outlying parts of the island was funneled onto a road that ran directly in front of our house and each car had to be searched for weapons at a road block, manned by very young & nervous National Guardsmen.

Frequently, gunfire would erupt & bullets went flying, some right into our home. No, this was not a Hillary Clinton sniper moment. This was for real & I remember the three of us hunkered down behind a thick cement wall that divided the living room from the dining room.

It was during one of these dangerous moments that the phone rang. There was a patient in need & it was the only time that my mother absolutely forbade her husband to leave the house, although that was his first instinct -- to go see that patient who needed him.

I grew up -- & then Stephanie grew up -- knowing that patients came first. That was my father's primary focus & responsibility.

He was very grateful to Puerto Rico & loved the people. He worked hard for them, for you, & for us. And I think he never forgot that large family of cousins because, through the years, he amassed a huge group of medical students, interns & residents, their spouses & their children, all of whom he considered family.

As a result, many of us in this room today share similar experiences & know that he could be as demanding as any dictator, as devoted as any priest or rabbi, as generous as any philanthropist, as self centered as any super star and still, despite it all, he was a humble man who never forgot his roots, loved to argue and had a theory about absolutely everything.

So all of you here today are part of our family, Stephanie and I know, appreciate & are proud of that fact. Like our father, we will never forget Puerto Rico, what it did for him, what it means in our own lives. We have both traveled the world but we always love coming home. It is after all, home, where we were born and where both our parents remain.

Towards the end of his life, many of you returned the love & respect he had for all of you by taking care of him in so many ways, big & small. Doctors who didn't make house calls, did. The nurses he had worked with for years, the residents he had helped train, all gathered around him when he was hospitalized in the wards he had helped design.

And when he came home, friends and colleagues stopped by to confer, chat, bring little gifts of food, photos & articles. And -- as the news spread -- the phone calls, the endless stream of phone calls, from people all over the world. Invitations to coffee, movies, ice cream, dinner, concerts, holidays filled his last years.

Stephanie & I know our father loved his life here, with and amongst all of you. You gave him a great & rewarding life & he truly appreciated it.

Thank you for demonstrating your love & respect for our father by coming here & sharing this time with us today. After all, in the end, we are all one big Puerto Rican family.

March 23, 2010

San Juan, Puerto Rico