Thomas Henry Taylor
The Washington Post
Tom
Taylor tried being a forest ranger, brew master,
carpenter, lab technician, ranch hand, house
painter, construction worker and computer
manager. He was in his late 30s before he found
his calling as a physician and specialist in
gastroenterology.For 13 years, he trained and practiced, in college pre-med courses, medical school, hospital internships, residencies and fellowships. In July, at the age of 49, he began an appointment to the medical gastroenterology staff at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and soon after met his first patients there.
He died July 31, 2011, in a Sunday afternoon traffic accident on a bridge in rural New Hampshire. His van was struck head-on by a car coming from the opposite direction in the town of Carroll, according to his father and news reports, and he died instantly. His wife, Kristin, the daughter of Larry and Wilma Wallace, Bonners Ferry, and his sons, James and Benjamin, were with him on a family outing to Mount Washington. They suffered injuries that were not life threatening.
Thomas Henry Tayor, a native of Washington, D.C., who was born January 31, 1962, grew up in southern Maryland. He had always marched to his own tune. In childhood and adolescence, he did well in school, but to him the routines and strictures were vexing. After graduating from McDonough High School in Charles County, he had little or no interest in attending a traditional college, although he had the grades to do so.
Instead, he chose an alternative path, the Sterling Institute in Craftsbury Common, Vermont, where he studied forestry in a program that emphasized experimental learning, teamwork and personal bonding. He loved the outdoors and he was a natural handyman. On construction jobs, which he held from time to time, he could usually figure out how to fix malfunctioning equipment.
He later graduated from the university of Vermont, where he majored in geology. He then earned his living as a house painter and as a maintenance worker on the Appalachian Trail. He was a forest ranger at Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana and at Selway Bitterroot Wilderness in Idaho and Montana. He hiked and learned to manage trains of pack mules.
In Marin County, California, he supervised a church retreat house. In Chicago, he studied methods of brewing beer, and he was planning a brew pub in California.
His studied of brewing rekindled a dormant interest in science, and he was feeling that he should, perhaps, try "doing something for the common good," said his wife, Kristin Wallace Taylor.
He thought about a career in medicine, and he began volunteering nights at the emergency room at San Francisco General Hospital in the late 1990s while pursuing pre-med courses at the University of California at Berkeley. He liked it and decided to make a change.
"Tom Taylor abhors tedium. In fact, he delights in drastic change," a National Public Radio reporter said of him in a 2005 program about career changes at midlife.
At 38, the future physician put aside his brew pub plans, returned to Washington, D.C., and enrolled at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. About 15 years older than most of his classmates, he was known as the "class dad." In 2004, he graduated.
"Stocky, affable and brown-bearded," according to an NPR description, Dr. Taylor was gentle and caring toward patients, and he won an award for his bedside manner.
He was in Portland, Oregon, for three years of medical residency and then returned to Georgetown for a medical fellowship. In June, he moved to New Hampshire for the job at Dartmouth.
Two weeks after Dr. Taylor's death, Kristin returned to her native Idaho with their two children. They are now living with her parents in Bonners Ferry.
Other survivors include Dr. Taylor's parents, the Reverend Arnold G. Taylor and Lillian B. Taylor, Washington, D.C., and two sisters; Alice Taylor, Arlington County, and Laura Taylor, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
"I think one of the remarkable things about being a human being is our ability to transform ourselves," Dr. Taylor told NPR in the 2005 program. "If you really want to make a change and you can see a path to do it, I think you should do it at any age."