”
One of the best parts of practicing medicine in Hollister all
those years,
”
Dr. Norman Currie once said,
”
was being able to treat the children and grandchildren of my
original patients.
”
“One of the best parts of practicing medicine in Hollister all those years,” Dr. Norman Currie once said, “was being able to treat the children and grandchildren of my original patients.”
Norman L. Currie, a beloved physician in the community for 41 years, passed away Wednesday at age 86 after a brief illness.
“He was an icon to this entire community, a friend to each of his patients and a real old-time, small-town doctor,” said Sharyl Currie, his wife of 32 years.
Before he had moved here to practice medicine in 1956, Currie joined the Army and served for several years in World War II. Once he finished service, he attended Syracuse Medical School, graduating in 1947.
He then practiced medicine for five years in a rural Colorado office until being recalled into service during the Korean War.
During that time, he served as a captain and a surgeon in the Air Force.
After finishing that term of service, Currie traveled to Gilroy in 1955. He spent a year there before coming to Hollister to practice medicine for 41 years.
Thirty-five of those years were in a downtown office on the corner of Monterey and Seventh streets. It was there and at Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital that Currie provided generations of Hollister residents with the kind of medical attention that has become a thing of the past.
He delivered thousands of babies, performed countless surgeries and, said Serina Castillo, his former assistant nurse, often accepted “tomatoes and pumpkin pies” as payment for services. And he did so his entire career. Three days before retiring at age 78, a patient paid him four homemade pies for a flu shot, Castillo said.
Widely admired by patients, nurses and colleagues, Currie was educated in the days before X-rays and highly technological scanning machines, said his former colleague, Dr. Aslam Barra.
“But he had such clinical judgment,” Barra said. “He was able to place a hand on your stomach and make the correct diagnosis.”
Barra pointed out that Currie could treat ailments in people of all ages – “from a diaper rash to a broken hip.”
“But he wasn’t just a fine doctor,” continued Barra. “He was a loved doctor, loved by everyone in the community.”
Bumpy Picetti, a 92-year resident who’s spent his entire life in Hollister, was a good friend and neighbor of Currie’s and attested to his contributions in San Benito County.
“People don’t have any idea what all he did,” said Picetti, “because he didn’t blow his own horn. He wasn’t a talker. He was a quiet thinker.”
Picetti remembers how Currie often would stop by and check on multiple patients on the way home after a long day at work.
“He had a strong compassion for the elderly and young folks,” Picetti said, “not at the expense of other age groups, but he really had the desire to care for those ages that have trouble caring for themselves.”
Dr. Shamus Moheyuddin knew Currie for more than 30 years, working with him for much of that time.
“He was my mentor, my patient, my colleague and my friend,” said Moheyuddin. “I was a board-certified surgeon, but I learned so much about surgery from him.”
Moheyuddin remembers that Currie’s kindness and wisdom touched everyone around him, and that he had deep involvement in the community.
“He was chief of staff at the hospital at the same time he had his own practice and was on the board at Gavilan.”
Both Barra and Moheyuddin recounted countless surgeries performed by Currie who, in the days before specialists, even acted as an anesthesiologist.
“He was an excellent physician, and an excellent surgeon who didn’t care about money, and didn’t mind coming to your home,” said Moheyuddin.
In the kind of coincidence Currie must have become used to near the end of his career, the last surgery he performed was on a patient named Bonnie Laverone whom he’d delivered decades earlier, according to a Free Lance story on his retirement from 1997.
“My daughter named her bunny Currie because he was her doctor also and she liked him so much,” Laverone said at the time.
Once Currie had retired, he was just as busy as he had been while practicing.
“He started right in on his garden, his roses, corn, tomatoes, fruit trees and orchids,” recalled his wife, as she fought back tears while still looking proud and happy. “He would fill all of his sacks with produce and bring it around to his friends. He was a man of the earth.”
Currie said her husband also restored Model A and Model T Fords, did major renovations on their house, disked his own fields, built elaborate dollhouses and became a master carver.
She proudly displayed a picture of 30 ornate carved and painted Santa Claus figures Currie had given her for Christmas.
“He never sat around,” she said shaking her head.
Sitting back, she returned to the subject of his decades as a beloved doctor, saying, “His practice always came first to him because he really did love every single patient.”
