Dr. Carl A. Hirsch

Carl Hirsch was born Sept. 21, 1929 in Los Angeles and died peacefully Sept. 22, 2016 in Boston. During his childhood Carl and his parents travelled and camped in the Sierra Mountains, Mexico, Alaska and Hawaii. His enthusiasm for the natural world began then and never dimmed. Carl attended the Webb School and Caltech and then served in the Marine Reserves as a weather observer prior to attending Washington University Medical School. In their Junior year Carl and classmate and lifelong friend Bill Elsea did a clerkship in London at St. Thomas Hospital and then travelled in a '58 VW Beetle they bought in Munich. They returned with the car by ship through Montreal and visited Bangor Maine where they were interested in work being done by Larry Weed at Eastern Maine General Hospital. They decided to intern there along with classmate Richard Colbert. At the Hospital Carl met his wife Rita where she was a pediatric nurse. They married and moved to Boston and Carl spent the first 12 years of his career in research in the Departments of Medicine, Bacteriology and Immunology and Biological Chemistry at Beth Israel Hospital and Harvard Medical School. In 1972 the family spent two years in San Francisco where Carl completed a fellowship in Clinical Chemistry at the V.A. Hospital and trained for his board certification in Clinical Chemistry/Clinical Pathology. Carl, Rita, son Peter and daughter Emily enjoyed exploring the National Parks of the West, especially Yosemite. The family returned to Weston Massachusetts and Carl accepted a faculty position at N.E. Deaconess & Baptist Hospitals and then New England Medical Center where he was Director of Clinical Chemistry until his retirement. Carl and Rita spent many happy summers on the coast of Maine at their house in Sedgwick. Carl was a warm and thoughtful person and no one brought that out more completely than his grandsons Ben and Daniel Gallini. When he was with them he always had a twinkle in his eye. Carl was a gifted musician and had many other talents and interests, among them woodworking, landscaping, orchids and history. He loved to share his knowledge and because of that we all know about things and how to do things that we wouldn't otherwise. Those who knew and loved him feel fortunate to have so many ways to remember him.