Dr. George Guest Haydock

SOUTH DARTMOUTH, Mass. -- George Guest Haydock, 84, pediatrician, environmentalist and avid outdoorsman, died on Dec. 13, 2003.

The son of Robert and Ruth Harrington Haydock, he was born on Jan. 9, 1919, in Boston, the second of four brothers. He graduated from Milton Academy in 1937, Harvard University in 1941, and Harvard Medical School in 1945. Following a residency at Boston Children's Hospital, he moved to Sharon, Conn., where he joined the Sharon Clinic as the first pediatrician.

As a dedicated pediatrician, he conducted house calls throughout northwestern Connecticut until the early 1980s. In February 1969, a six-foot snowdrift blocked the roads, but did not stop him from conducting rounds. He strapped on his skis and skied four miles to the Sharon Hospital. Dedication was the core of his life.

Dr. Haydock married Virginia Frothingham in 1947. After moving to Sharon with their first child, they had five more children. Soon after his retirement from the Sharon Clinic in 1985, the couple moved to Nonquitt in South Dartmouth, where they lived out their lives.

A born competitor, he played on the varsity football team at Harvard. He started a family tradition of regular Sunday touch football games, intense rivalries that included players of all ages. Love of skiing led him to join a ski club called the Drifters, whose activities included club races and spring skiing at Tuckerman's Ravine. He passed on to his children a love for not only skiing, but also for the mountains. Every summer, he took his children backpacking, mostly in the White Mountains.

Dr. Haydock was impervious to the cold. Guests at the Haydock home in Sharon learned not to come in the winter when the frost was on the inside of the windowpanes. He would walk through the snow to the end of the driveway to get the newspaper in his nightshirt and bare feet. He loved to tell of a very cold night during exam period at Harvard when he climbed out of his Eliot House window, scaled the fence, and skated up the river to Watertown and back to clear his head.

While at Milton, he discovered bird watching as a member of the Ornithology Club. This began a lifetime passion, participating in many bird counts in both Sharon and South Dartmouth. His “calling card” as a pediatrician was a tongue depressor with a family of ducks drawn on it for every departing patient.

Upon retirement, he went back to school at University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, taking courses in environmental studies and conservation. This led him to an association with the Lloyd Center, an environmental organization in South Dartmouth, where he served as president of the board. He also served on the board of the Coalition for Buzzards Bay.

He loved fun and humor. While his own children twiddled their thumbs at home, waiting to open their presents, he was Santa to any unfortunate children who were patients at the Sharon Hospital on Christmas Day. He was the Easter Bunny for his children and a multitude of their friends. He loved to tease and needle and practical joke, and was happiest in his last months when humor was flying around him. He often mortified his children by singing off key with gusto and by being the loudest voice at a Harvard-Yale game.

Dr. Haydock is survived by his six children, Anne H. “Nancy” of Brattleboro, Vt., Timothy G. of Katonah, N.Y., Mary M. “Molly” Cutler of Harvard, Rebecca H. of Cambridge, George G. Jr. “Geoff” of Sharon, Conn., and Samuel R. of Guilford, Conn.; 13 grandchildren; two brothers, Samuel of Dedham, and Francis B. of Ipswich.

He was predeceased by his wife, Ginny, in 1990, and by a brother, Robert Jr.