Deceased September 4, 2012
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In Memory
David died in September after a long bout with prostate cancer. He had been a vascular surgeon and professor of surgery at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. After Amherst he went to medical school at the University of Rochester and completed his residency at UVM. He was an army surgeon during the Vietnam War.
After completing a vascular surgery fellowship at UCLA, he returned to Vermont. He pioneered advanced medical training for first responders, such as ambulance crews and firefighters, and established the system for emergency medical services that still serves northern New England. He was Vermont’s first board-certified vascular surgeon and a president of the New England Society of Vascular Surgery. For years he was an associate editor of the Journal of Trauma. After retirement he wrote a definitive history of surgery at the University of Vermont.
David and Suzanne were married in 1989. Life with David was never boring. “[An] adventure,” she says, “could be sailing, snorkeling, skiing, scuba diving, raising orchids or inoculating oak logs with shiitake mushroom spores.” Adds a former surgical resident: “He was larger than life, charismatic, driven, creative, surgically adept beyond words and inspiring to the point where you would follow him anywhere. David was the quintessential surgeons’ surgeon.”
John Griffith ’56 remembers when David decided to sail his boat alone to (from?) Block Island, R.I., through choppy water. Concerned, John and Herb Pasternak ’56 kept in contact by radio. When David arrived in the harbor, the first thing he said was that calling him so often interfered with his maneuvering. John last saw David two years ago when he and Suzanne stayed with the Griffiths on their way home to Vermont from Florida. The weather called for frost, and David hurried to his car to cover his beloved orchids and heritage tomato seedlings. They were fine the next day.
John says that David Pilcher was a kind man and a good friend.
Suzanne Pilcher and John Griffith ’56