HAROLD C. SPEAR

SPEAR--Harold Charles, MD, was born on September 29, 1923 and died on August 29, 2013. His father, Harold Spear, was the founder of the New York Stock Exchange's specialist firm, Spear, Leeds, and Kellogg and he saw to it that Dr. Spear had a magical childhood. He grew up on a New Jersey farm called The Meadows which was dedicated to growing crops and poultry for the household and also had a stable of polo ponies which often were used in tournaments on the grounds of The Meadows and elsewhere. When Dr. Spear was age two, he went with his grandfather to Paris where he could remember putting his toy sailboat in the Grand Bassin located in the Bois de Boulogne along with other French children. When a little older, he traveled by yacht, again with his grandfather, down the Intracoastal Waterway from New Jersey to Miami, stayed at the Royal Poinciana Hotel in downtown Miami, then they went around the straits of Florida to Florida City where he and his grandfather camped out where they could hear the panthers crying at night. Later Dr. Spear attended Collegiate School in New York City, The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, and then went on to Yale where he was in World War II's accelerated pre-medical school classes. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1947, married Suzanne Bowmall McLaury that same year, and had three children, Laurinda Hope Spear, Harold Charles (Tex) Spear, MD, and Alison Leelyn Spear. He interned at St. Luke's Hospital in New York City, then went on for residencies at Yale, Mayo Clinic, and finished them at Yale. Dr. Spear was taken into the United States Air Force as Chief of Surgery at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, Texas. There he was joined as his Assistant Chief of Surgery by Paul S. Russell, MD, now the John Homans Distinguished Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, then and until Dr. Spear's death, his best friend. While Dr. Spear was in Houston, in 1951 one of the country's most virulent polio epidemic swept through the city and his son, Tex, only six months old, contracted infantile paralysis as it then was called, which has left him handicapped until the present day. The Salk vaccine inoculations for children against polio were not available until 1954. Because of the responsibilities of raising a crippled child, Dr. Spear moved to Miami in 1956 where the warm climate and the availability of year round swimming would be an invaluable asset for his son. In Miami, Dr. Spear joined the city's first thoracic surgical partnership, DeWitt Daughtry, MD and John Chesney, MD, which soon was known as Daughtry, Chesney, Spear. They taught at the University of Miami School of Medicine and did experimental work during the early days of heart lung machines, heart transplants, and pace makers while continuing to have a busy private practice. Dr. Spear was an early proponent of the correlations between good health, exercise, and diet. He was vehemently against smoking long before the tenet became common knowledge. He exercised daily and was one of the first crack of dawn joggers in Miami Shores where he and his family lived, much to the consternation of his neighbors. Dedication was Dr. Spear's lode star. He was dedicated to his family, his patients, and to his profession, the practice of cardiothoracic and vascular surgery. He valued his association with other physicians and countless of them were his friends. His wife once asked him in the later years of his practice how many physicians had referred him patients, he casually replied, "I guess about a thousand." Always Dr. Spear was honored when his medical peers came to him for treatment themselves, or sent him their families for surgery. Not only were they from Miami and other parts of Florida, at times they would come to him from other states. In his practice, never did he charge other physicians or their family members any fees. Most people have some sort of prejudices. Dr. Spear was a man with none. He saw the human spirit within each individual, the person sweeping the hospital floors was as important to him as the CEO of a large company. He never seemed rushed with people or his patients and he always was calm and soft spoken in the operating room. The only complaint operating room nurses ever made about him was that during operations, he talked mainly about one thing with his associates and residents, football. Football was his delight. Dr. Spear has written a memoir about the early days of cardiac, thoracic, and vascular surgery at Harvard, Yale, and Mayo Clinic, and at the start of his career during the early days when Miami was a quiet Southern town, which will be published in the near future. Some of his early Miami adventures included practicing in about ten hospitals, occasionally he would mention them to his family and friends just as a matter of fact, always modestly, he had to cover them all. Before the I-95 expressway was built, Dr. Spear faced the challenge of reaching the hospitals often by back roads, at times in the dark, because as a specialist, he was on call for many emergency rooms. He would say, "Between midnight and 4:00am, that's when there's trouble." Yet he never complained about getting up around 2:00am after a long day in surgery, getting dressed in a suit, shirt, and tie, then driving alone through the night in response to the call. Truly, Dr. Spear was a man for others. A private celebration of Dr. Spear's life was held on September 7, 2013. He is survived by his wife, Suzanne Bowmall McLaury Spear, daughters, Laurinda Hope Spear, Alison Leelyn Spear, sister, Nancy Rossbach and family, a son, Harold Charles Spear Ill, MD, sons-in-law, Bernardo Fort-Brescia, Alexander Stevens Reese, grandchildren, Marisa Rose Fort, Alexander Charles Paul Fort, Nicholas McLaury Fort, Raymond August Fort, Harold Emil Fort, Gabriel Bernard Fort, Leslie Caylin Spear, Harold Arthur Spear, Charlotte Rosalind Spear, Jeremy Acheson Spear Platt, Carolina Clare Spear Gomez, Isabella Clementine Bliss Reese and great-grandchildren Gil Spear and Emilia Hope Adams.