Stephen (“Brock”) Brockway, MD, was an adventurer and an explorer, a cowboy and a mountain man, a reader and a poet, a physician and therapist and healer. He was a father and new grandfather, and he considered parenthood his highest and greatest calling.
Brock liked nothing more than to hike into the desert mountains with Yorkshire tea and his dogs, and he did that most dawn mornings in retirement. Prior to that, he worked for 44 years as a psychiatrist: running a combat stress unit, pioneering group therapy for veterans who suffered from the newly-recognized “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” (PTSD); then working as chief psychiatrist and medical director at the Meadows, in Wickenburg, AZ, treating people with sex and drug addictions, along with other trauma-based mental health issues.
Brock earned his medical degree from the Medical College of Wisconsin at Marquette and his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College, where he captained the rifle team, served as a search and rescue mountaineer, and tutored Native American students who came to Dartmouth from reservations.
After a near-death experience in college, Brock pursued a lifelong devotion to faith: seeking to understand and grow deeper connection with God.
He also was a political and news junkie. A student of both history and psychology, he recognized the fascism growing within the U.S. nationalist movement far earlier than most, and he never feared to speak his mind and share the truth he saw.
In fact, it didn’t seem like Brock was afraid of anything. And when the cancer diagnosis came, he faced that too with courage. Late in life he met and married his wife, Hillary, and with her he experienced, despite his cancer, possibly the happiest period of his life.
Brock will be missed by his sons, Ross (a lawyer in Atlanta) and Ben (a professional hockey player in Michigan); his wife, Hillary (now a single parent to their four dogs); his granddaughter, Leona; his many former patients and colleagues; and friends around the country whom he treasured.
All the wisdom he gained he condensed into this: “We’re put on this earth to learn how to love.”
Brock liked nothing more than to hike into the desert mountains with Yorkshire tea and his dogs, and he did that most dawn mornings in retirement. Prior to that, he worked for 44 years as a psychiatrist: running a combat stress unit, pioneering group therapy for veterans who suffered from the newly-recognized “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” (PTSD); then working as chief psychiatrist and medical director at the Meadows, in Wickenburg, AZ, treating people with sex and drug addictions, along with other trauma-based mental health issues.
Brock earned his medical degree from the Medical College of Wisconsin at Marquette and his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College, where he captained the rifle team, served as a search and rescue mountaineer, and tutored Native American students who came to Dartmouth from reservations.
After a near-death experience in college, Brock pursued a lifelong devotion to faith: seeking to understand and grow deeper connection with God.
He also was a political and news junkie. A student of both history and psychology, he recognized the fascism growing within the U.S. nationalist movement far earlier than most, and he never feared to speak his mind and share the truth he saw.
In fact, it didn’t seem like Brock was afraid of anything. And when the cancer diagnosis came, he faced that too with courage. Late in life he met and married his wife, Hillary, and with her he experienced, despite his cancer, possibly the happiest period of his life.
Brock will be missed by his sons, Ross (a lawyer in Atlanta) and Ben (a professional hockey player in Michigan); his wife, Hillary (now a single parent to their four dogs); his granddaughter, Leona; his many former patients and colleagues; and friends around the country whom he treasured.
All the wisdom he gained he condensed into this: “We’re put on this earth to learn how to love.”
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