David A. Morowitz

MOROWITZ

DAVID A. MOROWITZ

David A. Morowitz, MD, died January 7, 2024, aged 85. A supremely gifted and dedicated physician, he believed medicine was an art and practiced it that way. A fierce guardian of his patients, he was impatient with the cruelties of bureaucracy and never avoided a battle if it would benefit someone in his care. As a young person and as a trainee doctor, David flourished under great teachers and repaid them by teaching others. When many of his teachers â€" from elementary school through residency and fellowship â€" returned to him as patients later in life, he was honored and humbled to be in their service. He would never accept a payment from a Holocaust survivor or a person in need, and he gave generously of his time, his acute eye and ear, his humor, and his tender soul in his fifty years as a physician, and as a husband, father, and friend.



Though medicine was his calling, he was a person of so many other serious passions. His life was full of art, books, good food, music, photography, wine, and Yiddish jokes. Movies were a constant, whether it was Flash Gordon two-reelers at the Alex Theater in 1940s Chicago, Humphrey Bogart at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge when he was a young intern, or François Truffaut double features at Washington, DC's late, lamented Circle and Biograph repertory theaters.



Words meant a great deal to him, in speeches, in books and articles, in letters. His subjects were incredibly broad, from medical diagnostics and medical humanism to social justice in healthcare and the writers he loved most, John O'Hara, Joseph Wechsberg, and E.B White. Adlai Stevenson was his patron saint.



When he took up a camera later in life, he ardently documented the faces of friends new and old, his beloved Paris, and the bursting forth and rich decay of the world in the saturated colors he adored. His eye as a photographer won him exhibitions at the OK Harris Gallery in New York City, and in galleries and exhibition spaces in Washington, DC, St. Petersburg, Russia, and Tel Aviv, among others. And when he was invited to help document Bernard Berenson's Villa I Tatti in Florence, he was thrilled to merge his love of art, art history, and photography. He was proud of the resulting book, but hilariously and grumpily lamented misplaced commas and infelicitous phrases in a co-author's text. "Give me the red pencil," he said when he got the page proofs, but he could not convince the publisher to shell out for his extensive edits.



Family life animated him most of all. With his beloved wife, Barbara, he traveled and entertained others with dash and fun. With his children, Nancy and Joel, he laughed, taught, gave, talked, and showed how to break rules when necessary. He never stopped worshipping his parents, Pat and Eck, and talked of them with the deepest love until the very end. He never stopped grieving the too early deaths of Barbara, Joel, and his brother Michael.



David is survived by his cherished daughter Nancy, his dearest pal Alan Morris, his devoted caretaker Ana Bonilla, and many wonderful friends and grateful patients.



A memorial service will be held at Washington Hebrew Congregation, 3935 Macomb Street NW, on Wednesday, January 17, at 11 a.m. In lieu of flowers, donations to the U.S. Holocaust Museum are gratefully suggested.