Dr. Parviz Mehri
July 3, 1930 – May 26, 2022
From 1952 as a medical student up until his death in May 2022, Dr. Parviz Mehri conducted tens of thousands of eye exams over those 70 years and appears to be America's longest-serving ophthalmologist from 1963 to 2022 (59 years). With an office in Danbury, CT, he handled major eye surgeries into his early seventies, minor surgeries into his early eighties, and routine eye exams into his early nineties. Overcoming the death of his beloved wife of 48 years in 2007, and Covid in 2020, Dr. Mehri never retired.
The reciprocal devotion between Dr. Mehri and his patients became a lifelong bond. Once hobbled by a broken leg from a ski accident, Dr. Mehri trekked a treacherous mile in a blizzard on crutches to catch a taxi to get to the hospital to tend to a patient at risk of losing her eye. In 2005, a new family moved to his street in Newtown, CT, and when the young children introduced themselves, he remarked, “Is your father David Chaloux? I did surgery on him when he was a child,” and then explained the details. Dr. Mehri often recalled the more intricate surgeries he performed and cherished the fact that some of his current patients had been seeing him since the 1970s.
At 17 years old, Parviz Mehri arrived in America with his older brother, Cyrus, from Ahvaz, Iran in 1947. They immigrated with the encouragement of a U.S. colonel, who during WWII, befriended the boys' father, a prominent lawyer and judge. Top students at the prestigious Alborz high school, Cyrus and Parviz diligently translated documents from Farsi into English, and the colonel said to their father, “Why don't you send your sons to America for education?” They soon arrived at Louisiana State University, among the first immigrants from Iran, the seeds of a diaspora that now approaches one million Iranian Americans.
Parviz worked his way through college busing tables, and ironically, teaching English to Americans. He finished college in two and half years, enrolled at Washington University of St. Louis Medical School and became a doctor at 25, one of the youngest ever at the time, graduating in 1956. The troubling bigotry he witnessed at LSU and in St. Louis towards Black Americans left a lasting impression on him.
Between completing a residency in pharmacology and starting a residency in ophthalmology at Manhattan
Eye and Ear, he spent a year in Iran where he fell in love with Bahijeh Afzal. They married in 1959, but their plan to come to America faced a major obstacle. As a college student at the American University in Beirut, Bahijeh openly advocated for democracy and criticized the Shah of Iran to her friends. Unbeknownst to her, a member of SAVAK, Iran's secret police, chronicled her statements. When she returned to Iran after her sophomore year, the Iranian government forbade her from leaving the country or completing college.
Undeterred by the travel ban on his wife, Parviz spent a year working through the bureaucracy of Iran until the government relented and let him and his bride leave the country but only after showing him a giant stack of files they had on Bahijeh's outspokenness. They left for America, seeking democracy, freedom and education for their future children, walking over a bridge from Canada at Niagara Falls in 1960. Both of them were influenced by and supported Kennedy's idealism, the U.S. civil rights movement and the anti-war movement of that decade. Their home would later become a sanctuary for relatives immigrating from Iran who contributed to American science, law, literature, academia and medicine.
They lived in Queens while Dr. Mehri completed his residency. Receiving a 3 a.m. call from Danbury Hospital to collect eyes for the eye bank as the Chief Resident at Manhattan Eye and Ear, he discovered Danbury and Danbury discovered him. Danbury Hospital staff informed him of the need for a young ophthalmologist in the area and they were right. Dr. Mehri opened his office in 1963 and soon his office on North Main street overflowed with patients.
His legend as a surgeon grew when he succeeded in a free hand cornea transplant, saving the eye of a rancher who had a perforated eye from a cow's tail. Born left handed, but forced to use his right hand as a child in Iran, his ambidextrousness allowed him to skillfully succeed with surgeries others would not dare to try. He introduced cornea transplants and microscopic surgery to Danbury Hospital. He championed patient safety by convincingly arguing to turn eye surgery into outpatient surgery to avoid week-long hospital stays that risked infection.
He taught eye surgery to residents at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine for 17 years. He developed new surgical techniques adopted by Yale Medical School at the behest of one of his proteges, Alden Mead. He traveled abroad to study at prominent eye clinics such as the Barraquer Ophthalmology Center in Spain and brought those teachings to America. Dr. Mehri was selected as an Affiliate of the Royal Society of Medicine in England, as a Diplomat of the American Academy of Ophthalmology
and as a Fellow of the American and International Colleges of Surgeons. He felt that doctors should be humble and recognize that they make mistakes and not lose sight of the human side of medicine. He felt he was born to be an eye doctor and felt particularly gratified that successful eye surgery improved lives.
In addition to being an ophthalmologist, he was an etymologist, with a passion for the origin and evolution of words. He loved to garden and enjoyed the outdoors. He was an avid skier until his 80s and traveled the world from Andorra to France to Argentina to ski. For many years he served on medical ski patrol at the Catamount, Massachusetts ski resort. He never stopped learning. Grieving from the loss of his wife, Bahijeh, to systemic lupus, he visited Buddhist temples throughout the Northeast to gain new insights.
With a keen window into aging from his patients, he developed his own strategies to counter aging. He switched to a diet almost entirely of fruits, vegetables, fish and nuts. He didn't drink alcohol and minimized the use of medications. He took sleeping seriously and had the discipline to sleep 12 hours a day typically from 8 pm to 8 am. He communed with nature daily. He wrote poetry and picked up piano in his 70s to keep his mind sharp. He swam regularly during the summers into his 90s. In his final years, he had a near daily routine of visiting his office to check the mail and walking at the Southford Falls Connecticut state park before stopping for a sandwich. He avidly texted friends and family daily using emojis to brighten people's days.
During the peak of Covid in April of 2020, he was hospitalized for a week but persevered with flying colors. The doctors said his “bloodwork looked as good as a 16 year old, not a 90 year old” and released him to make room for others in the overcrowded Covid wards. While thousands in his age bracket perished, six months later, Dr. Mehri resumed seeing patients, conducting eye exams a few hours a week, but lamented that “the virus wiped out my practice.”
His late wife, Bahijeh, was an abstract painter who showed in New York and Connecticut. He is survived by three children: Cyrus, a civil rights lawyer in Washington DC; Susan Hupfer, a family counselor near Boston; and Darius, an engineer working for New York City; as well as six grandchildren. Known for memorable phrases, he started each day with the pronouncement “another day of glory.” To Dr. Mehri, every day was a gift of nature. There was a private family graveside service and burial at Newtown Village Cemetery. Donations in his memory can be made to the Lupus Foundation of America.