Roger James Bulger

Roger Bulger was a compassionate physician, prolific author, innovative thinker, and distinguished leader. He was a committed husband of 65 years to wife Ruth; beloved father to Faith Bulger (Mark Sydenham) and Grace Bulger; grandfather to Giuliana Weiss, Siena Sydenham, and Shayleigh Sydenham; brother-in-law to Jan Grouse, Dorothy and Bob Fontana, and Judy Thornton; important uncle to Eric and Yuko Grouse, Katie Grouse and Rick Sefeldt, Judy and Jonathan Minkoff, Elena Gettel, Annie Gettel, Mike Bulger and Leslie Kent, Kate Camber, Patty Bulger, Peggy Bulger, Eileen and Devlin Crose, and Tom Bulger and Marilyn Pierce-Bulger.

Roger was known for his thoughtfulness, empathy and intelligence, as well as his kind, self-deprecating sense of humor. One of his favorite jokes was introducing his family as "These are my daughters Faith and Grace-and my wife and I are Anxiety and Dread!"

Roger was born in Brooklyn in 1933 to his Irish father, Bill, a salesman who later became a chiropractor, and his Italian mother, Florence, a teacher. He looked up to his brother Billy, who was six years older; loved his cocker spaniel Taffy; and was a devoted fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

His adventures in medicine began early, when he almost died at age 7 of a severe tonsillitis. He was saved first by an early antibiotic, then by a doctor who happened to walk by his room with a tracheotomy tube in his pocket when Roger's tube had blocked and he couldn't breathe. And finally, perhaps most importantly, he was saved when his mother brought a baseball to a Brooklyn Dodgers game and got it signed to him by PeeWee Reese-a get-well gift he cherished and a story he loved to tell.

He later moved to Queens, where he played stickball on the street with his many friends. His father taught him to fight, but he never did. His favorite book was "Ferdinand the Bull," and like Ferdinand, this Taurus was a lover not a fighter.

Although baseball was his first love, he soon adopted basketball, excelling on his high school team (where NBA great Bob Cousy also played and inspired him), which helped him earn a scholarship to Harvard University. He became the captain of the Harvard basketball team, playing as a point guard whose number was #12. He led his team to victory over Yale his senior year. He forged lifelong friends there, including Paul Sarbanes and Ted Kennedy, with whom he would work on health policy issues later in his life.

Upon graduation, he won the 1955 Lionel de Jersey Harvard Scholarship, given each year to one outstanding Harvard scholar/athlete. This gave him the opportunity to spend a post-graduate year at Cambridge University, where he played on the club basketball team, coached the Oxford basketball team, learned to row, and gave toasts and drank sherry at fancy events this Brooklyn boy had never dreamed of. He even spent some time in London where he met T.S. Eliot, a previous Harvard scholar. He prized the letters he received from Eliot, including the one that counseled him to buy wool underwear to stay warm in the drafty Cambridge dorm! He traveled around Europe extensively for basketball and for pleasure, which began his lifelong love of travel. Eventually, his parents joined him, and he showed them around Europe for several weeks.

He then returned to Harvard Medical School, where he met his wife Ruth who was working toward a PhD in Anatomy/Physiology. He chose to become a primary care physician with a specialty in infectious disease.

After earning his MD, he went to the University of Washington for his internship and residency. He and Ruth drove cross-country, stopping in her hometown of Minneapolis to get married on the way. They spent over a decade there as he became chief resident and Ruth finished her PhD and taught medical students. They welcomed two daughters, Faith and Grace, and Seattle became an outpost for the extended family, as most of their siblings joined them with their growing families.

Their next stop, in 1970, was Durham, North Carolina, where Roger served as Chairman of Medicine at Duke University and Dean of Allied Health, and Ruth taught at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. He still played basketball a couple times a week with other physicians and taught his dog to pick up the newspaper at the end of the driveway on Sunday mornings. Unfortunately, the dog proved to be an escape artist and overachiever, surprising him with 20-30 newspapers each Sunday, forcing Roger to return all the neighbors' papers each week.

Roger's next move was to Washington D.C., where he became the first executive officer at the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences in 1972. Ruth taught medical school at University of Maryland at Baltimore, and the family settled in Columbia, Maryland. Always active, Roger became an early jogger-often running after the next family dog, Susie, a whippet-mix who loved nothing more than a good game of chase-and the whole family took up tennis and horseback riding. During this time, he and Ruth bought a cottage on Brant Point in Nantucket, named Whale of a Tale, which became a well-loved family vacation home for many years, and a home-base through many moves and changes.

In 1976, Roger and his family moved to Massachusetts just in time to take part in the year-long bicentennial festivities. He was the first Chancellor-Dean of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, while Ruth taught Anatomy and Pathology.

Texas called in 1978, beginning an important leg of his journey. Roger was the President of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, where he began several unique initiatives for the community, from implementing financial and efficiency reforms and recruiting nationally prominent deans and professors that helped position UT Health Science Center Houston as a national leader in medicine and public health, to creating a closed circuit TV network for which he interviewed people such as authors Hans Kung and Victor Frankl, the Center for Visual and Performing Arts, which brought artists and writers to the university in the name of healing, and the Native Arts Festival for Texas's Sesquicentennial. He also took steps to encourage more equitable distribution of health care to underserved communities in Houston.

In 1988, he moved to Potomac, Maryland to head the Association of Academic Health Centers for 18 years. In this role, he elevated the role of academic health center vice-presidents in national healthcare policy-making and produced influential publications for national distribution. In semi-retirement, he dedicated himself to addressing health disparity in the United States and worked to increase health equity as an advisor to the National Center for Minority Health and Disparities at the National Institutes of Health, among other projects.

He also served on boards including Georgetown University, Research America, American International Health Alliance, Medicine / Public Health Initiative, and the Advancement of Multicultural and Minority Medicine, (IAMMM).

He was a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, Royal Society of Medicine, and Academy for Health Services Research, and was a Member of the Institute of Medicine, Infectious Disease Society of America, and the National Academy of Social Insurance. He received numerous honorary degrees, from universities including Thomas Jefferson University, University of Maryland, Western University of Health Sciences, Kirkesville University Osteopathic Medicine, and Rush University. He also received numerous awards, including the American Academy of Family Practice President's Award.

He and Ruth lived in Potomac for 35 years, where they enjoyed attending the symphony, basketball games, and baseball games, as well as playing golf at the Bethesda Country Club. He and Ruth also enjoyed spending time at their house in Wild Dunes on the Isle of Palms near Charleston, South Carolina-not including the alligator that lived in the first-hole water feature out back!

In their retirement years, he and Ruth traveled around the world, with favorite trips including African safaris, Italian foodie adventures, London, Iona in Scotland, European river cruises, and repeat trips to Costa Rica, Grand Cayman, Hawaii, and of course Nantucket. They also enjoyed time with their grandchildren, who lived nearby for much of their lives.

Most recently, he and Ruth followed their daughter Faith and her family out to Tacoma, Washington-near where it all started. They lived in assisted living, close to many Seattle-based relatives, and enjoyed their views of Mt Rainier.

As a lifelong participant in the American healthcare system, Dr. Bulger authored and edited several books and major policy studies. He often discussed the importance of connecting the highest human values and ethics to the healthcare system, to both provide improved care as well as greater justice and compassion. In recent books including the second edition of Healing America: Hope, Mercy, Justice, and Autonomy in the American Health Care System, he shared how his experiences shaped his perspective on healing others and the system as a whole. He also addressed topics including the need for more diversity, equality, and health equity; the importance of mercy; the need to understand suffering; and harnessing the power of the spoken word and the arts in healing.

Other of his books include: Hippocrates Revisited: A Search for Meaning in 1973

Narcissus, Pogo and Lew Thomas' wager in 1980; In Search of the Modern Hippocrates 1987; Technology, Bureaucracy, and Healing in America: A Postmodern Paradigm in 1988; Quest for Mercy: The Forgotten Ingredient in 1998; Healing America in 2010; Physician and Philosopher: The Philosophical Foundation of Medicine: Essays by Dr. Edmund Pellegrino in 2001; and A Portrait of Leadership, a Fighter for Health: The Honorable Paul Grant Rogers in 2005.

Roger was the strongest person anyone knew, mentally and physically. He was extremely healthy for most of his life, but did have some serious medical challenges. In addition to beating three kinds of cancer, he was able to repeatedly bounce back from major health issues including a broken hip, multiple pneumonias, two bouts with covid, and a GI bleed. He rarely complained and was always unfailingly positive, leaning on statistics until they no longer served him, then saying, "Well, if I live, it's 100% and if I die it's 0%!" He would prove anyone wrong who told him he couldn't recover from an illness or do something he wanted to do. He even wrote an oped essay about "post-traumatic bliss" to describe the way he felt after finishing a long period of cancer treatments in his 60s.

His sweetness, depth, and sense of humor lasted to the end of his life. In his last months, when his wonderful caregivers brought his meals, he always asked, "What are you having?" and tried to give them some of his. He was grateful for the care he received and took time to thank the people who were there for him. When a nurse asked him if anything was hurting him, he joked, "Yes, the world's in disarray." Yet, when asked by another nurse if he suffered from any delusions, he promptly replied, "Yes, I think that I am happy."

Roger will be dearly missed and forever appreciated. The world, his family, and the people he touched are far better for his presence. His life was long, fruitful, full of adventures, and well-lived. On his 92nd birthday, he was asked what he was most proud of in his life. He answered, "People are complex; problems are complex. I am glad that I left a body of work that discusses complex things that may be helpful in addressing them. And also, I treated a lot of people with pneumonia!" At the very end weeks later, when asked how he was feeling, his last words were classic Roger: "Better and better."