Benjamin Nathan Schuman, MD

May 8, 1923 - April 4, 2016

It has now been five years since Ben’s death. We take this moment to honor his remarkable life.

Ben Schuman was born to Russian-Jewish parents in Laurium, a copper mining town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The family moved to Chicago when Ben was in high school. A few years later he met Inge Mayer in a college English literature class and she liked an essay he wrote. They were married in 1944 while Ben was serving in the Air Corps.

After the war ended he entered the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago and became a busy general practitioner in suburban Wheeling. In the course of his work he developed a strong interest in psychiatry and at the end of seven years of medical practice decided to enter a psychiatry residency program. During the summer between closing his practice and beginning residency Ben, Inge and their two children traveled to Haiti where he volunteered at a medical clinic in the fishing village of Port de Paix. He returned to Chicago and trained at the Neuropsychiatric Institute of the University of Illinois Medical Center. Subsequently he established a psychiatric practice on North Michigan Avenue.

In 1972, after seven years of private psychiatric practice, Ben and Inge decided to relocate to the San Francisco Bay area where their children lived. There he decided to do something professionally to really make a difference. He became the first mental health provider in east Oakland and founded what is now the nonprofit Schuman-Liles Clinic. No patient was ever refused treatment based on inability to pay or lack of proper documentation. Ben was passionate about his work and was adored by his patients.

Ben enjoyed a lifelong love of literature, art, and architecture. He wrote and illustrated poetry and short stories, doodled, drew, painted and sculpted, and relentlessly remodeled a series of family homes. He published two books, The Human Skeleton, which became a best seller, and The Human Eye. Both texts have been used by students of art and health sciences. Later in life he spent many hours creating imaginatively engineered paper sculptures.

Ben and Inge traveled extensively, often with children and grandchildren, exploring unexpected places, learning from local cultures, appreciating and collecting folk art.

He was dedicated to maintaining an active lifestyle, walking, bicycling, and working out. He meditated, practiced yoga, and enjoyed a healthy, highly disciplined diet. He approached cooking as an art form, devising original and thoroughly healthy dishes.

As the quintessential grandfather, Ben collaborated with Inge to treat their grandchildren to “Alphabet Dinners” with a series of weekly meals. Each meal featured dishes that began with a single letter, starting with apple, asparagus, and avocado and ending 26 meals later with zucchini, ziti, and zest. Ben was predeceased by his parents, Esther Fanny (Blacher) and Max Schuman, older brother, Phillip Maurice Schuman, and son, Phillip David Schuman. He is survived by his wife of 71 years, Inge Schuman, daughter, Carolyn Schuman, MD, son-in-law, Stephen Sidney, MD, and grandchildren, Joel Sidney, Miriam Sidney, Jonathan Sidney, and Jessica Schuman.

Above all else Ben was innovative, he had vision, and he was loving and supportive to both his family and the wider world beyond. He moved through his entire life with the generous spirit he found in his own parents and he has hopefully transmitted that generosity to those who came after him. He always assumed the best about everybody and he always brought out the best in everyone. We cannot begin to list all the gifts he has given to us. We think of him and appreciate those gifts every day.