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Perspective Newsletters
Winter 2005
IN MEMORIAM
Page 2
Dr. Stephen Sheehy was an original member of the Board of Directors of Leary
School and served the school faithfully from its beginning in 1964 until 1999.
For the Ill or the Indigent, Physician Was Always on Call
By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Stephen Sheehy died Nov. 24 at 2:55 a.m. from a heart attack. It was the hour he
slept lightly, expecting calls from patients, fellow physicians or the police, all
needing his advice.
At 79, he had spent 50 years practicing family medicine in Arlington County and 47
years as an Arlington medical examiner. In 1994, at an age when many of his peers
were retiring their trusty Physicians' Desk Reference - a book, incidentally, that
Sheehy read lustily, as if it were a romantic potboiler - he accepted a job as medical
director of the Arlington Free Clinic, then new.
He helped sustain the thriving nonprofit organization, culling hundreds of volunteers
from his connections. He made himself available at all hours.
"Call me when you need me," he said all his life.
Stephen Joseph Sheehy was born Dec. 21, 1924, at Garfield Hospital in Washington.
His parents were Irish immigrants, and they doted on Stephen and his younger brother.
As a young man, he accompanied his father on delivery runs for the Wonder Bread Co.
A graduate of Gonzaga College High School, the future doctor praised the institution
for its educational philosophy. "They used to tell us that, 'Whatever you know now
in 10 years is going to be outdated,'" he once told an interviewer.
"They were so rigorous that after finishing here, college and medical school" - both
at Georgetown University - "seemed quite a breeze."
Throughout his life, he found extracurricular passions, from aerobics to the study
of the great philosophers. He learned French, German and Spanish. And the old doctors'
pastime, golf.
Having skipped two grades as a young man, Sheehy graduated from medical school at
age 22. He settled in Arlington with his new bride, Kay, and they had nine children.
Family medicine had appealed to him because it offered more interaction with patients
than some specialties do. Toward the end of his life, he was sending hundreds of
Christmas cards to patients and those he had met through his work as a medical examiner
on cases involving suicides and accidental deaths. "Nobody is just a patient," he
said. "Each one had a name and a problem."
Sheehy advocated the interests of the misbegotten, such as the time in the mid-1980s
he came before the Arlington County Board to plead for a nursing home for the elderly. "The
need is so great and the obligation so compelling, I urge you to approve it," he
told the board.
It was to no avail. The board voted down the home after residents complained about
its possible effect on traffic and other issues.
In the early 1990s, members of the Arlington County Medical Society needed a top
medical officer for its planned free, volunteer-staffed clinic. The clinic would
provide no-cost and low-cost medical care to immigrants and others with little access
to health plans and care providers.
They asked Sheehy.
"His reaction initially was not to ask how much time (was) involved. He just said
yes, he would do it," said Joseph Backer, a radiologist who helped start the clinic. "Ever
since, the answer would always be the same: Yes, he would do it."
The Arlington Free Clinic was a small operation at first. It was, in fact, homeless.
Sheehy persuaded the principal of Thomas Jefferson Middle School to open the school's
clinic one night a week so doctors could see patients from the free clinic. His reasoning
was that the school was a safe setting that its potential clientele would have little
fear of entering.
Sheehy later used his connections with Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, where
he once was chief of staff, to reap for the clinic hundreds of thousands of dollars
of in-kind services. He got doctors to volunteer, including gynecologists, endocrinologists
and pediatricians.
In 1998, the clinic moved to its current location, in a tan brick building at 2926
Columbia Pike, where it has eight examination rooms and a pharmacy. Last fiscal year,
the clinic treated 1,400 people and had 6,500 medical appointments. Its annual budget
is $1.1 million.
Sheehy told his family that the clinic work was his favorite job because he was able
to practice pure medicine with little of the paperwork that often characterized his
private practice and hospital experiences.
He loved decision making, simplifying medical conundrums, spending time with the
patients who often were immigrants or indigent - people who he said "have a double
burden of poverty and ill health."
His colleagues recalled him working late one rough Tuesday night. Everyone was worn
down, not the least Sheehy, who spent the evening tapping chests, running exams and
talking through translators.
A pizza appeared, as it often did for the nighttime patients. By the time Sheehy
finished his work, a few cold, hard slices remained. He grabbed one and strolled
through the front door, smiling as he told his colleagues, "You know, it just doesn't
get any better than this."
( c ) 2004, The Washington Post. Reprinted with permission.
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