`HE LOVED ALL OF OUR KIDS'
Remembering Dr. Henry Pabst
By all accounts, Dr. Henry Pabst was the kind of person who would shy away from the idea of being featured in the newspaper.
His friends and family say it was more likely you'd hear about his accolades and successes, including once being named among the top physicians of the last century, from someone else rather than ever hear him discuss them.
The immunologist and pediatrician who spent more than 30 years working at Edmonton's Rosecrest Home with some of the province's most medically fragile children, died Monday from COVID-19. He was 87 years old.
His son Rick Pabst said his dad was always looking for ways to help people. He travelled to the Arctic to help communities that could not easily access a doctor and spent time researching in Africa and helping to reestablish the hospital in Kampala, Uganda, following its civil war.
“He was always looking for an adventure somewhere where he could use his skills and knowledge to help people. Particularly, obviously, with an interest in children,” Rick Pabst said.
In 2005 when the Alberta Medical Association named Henry Pabst one of the top 100 physicians of the century to mark the province's 100th anniversary, he was quick to point out the many other doctors he thought were more worthy, Rick Pabst said.
“He just was a very humble kind of man,” he said.
MOVED TO CANADA IN 1956
Henry Pabst was born in Kisumu, Kenya, to expatriate German parents, grew up in Germany and moved to Canada in 1956.
After getting his medical degree, he worked as an assistant professor in the department of pediatrics at the University of Alberta from 1970 to 1998 where his research included work on the role of T cells in immune responses and nutrition in infant formula.
Pabst began working at Rosecrest in 1982 and was there until he retired in 2015. Over the decades he developed a reputation for having a sharp eye that could spot problems before they developed and a soft touch with anxious and often overwhelmed parents.
Tom Braid, whose son Nicholas lived at Rosecrest from the age of two until he died at 16, estimates that Nicolas was admitted to hospital 30 times in the first two years of his life before moving to Rosecrest. After being taken into Pabst's care, that number dropped to 10 over the rest of Nicholas's life.
“He became part of your family. It was like he loved all of our kids as much as we did,” Braid said.
Sandy Walsh- Schuurman, who worked as head nurse at Rosecrest and later went on to manage the facility, said working with Pabst gave her confidence to do her job.
“He was just always so calm and kind and compassionate ... he was never too busy to chat with anybody. He took that time and did that and I think that's a good lesson,” she said.
In the 1990s, when rumours began circulating that the government was going to close the Rosecrest facility, Pabst put his reputation and potentially his government contract on the line and spoke out publicly against the plan.
“(He did it) strictly for the kids. He would never have any motivation but the kids,” Walsh- Schuurman said.
Eventually the government promised that Rosecrest would stay open.
WORKED AT ROSECREST INTO HIS 80S
Henry Pabst continued working there until he was into his 80s.
Complications from Parkinson's and the death of his wife of 59 years, Liz, in 2017 led to a move into a continuing care facility.
Even when he was finally ready to hang up his stethoscope, Rick Pabst said his father remained interested in medicine and could often be seen reading from stacks of the latest medical journals.
“You could turn to an article and you could see where he had underlined different portions,” he said.
“So here's the guy who's 87 years old, and in very declining health from Parkinson's and everything that goes with that, and yet he's still voraciously reading these medical journals and research articles about different things and just wanting to keep up on what was going on in the world of medical research.”
According to the family, a funeral will be planned for Pabst at a future date when COVID-19 restrictions permit.
Braid said it's cruel that the pandemic means they can't have a ceremony to honour Pabst yet.
“We're gonna have a celebration when this is all over ... but for what Dr. Pabst meant to all of us, he'll never be forgotten,” he said. “Never.”