Beloved Boynton physician dies at 88
Robert Weems remembers sitting with his siblings in the back of his father’s office on Fourth Street while his dad visited with his patients. He, along with his brother John and sister Kathy, were given a job of their own — to count the pills— to keep them busy. And they snacked on treats others brought to the office.
His dad was Dr. N. Marion Weems, the son of Boynton Beach’s first doctor, Nathaniel Marion Weems Sr., who began to practice medicine in Boynton in 1925. Marion expanded on the inherited legacy by becoming a doctor known to wear bright colored shirts instead of the basic lab coat, with a bedside manner that could make anyone feel comfortable, and who so many today can recall stitching up a cut or delivering their baby.
It was a small town then. And anyone who met Robert as a young boy would say, “Oh, you’re Dr. Weems’ boy.”
“It was a good feeling back there,” Robert, 55, said, smiling.
Marion Weems first worked as a family practice doctor when he joined his father’s office in 1957. He worked until 1990, and after serving more than 40 years on Bethesda Hospital’s board of directors, he resigned in 2012. He died at his home Friday. He was 88.
“He had a really good life and the last couple weeks weren’t good,” John Weems, 53, said. “It’s far from a tragedy for me. It’s a graceful end of life, perfect in some ways.”
Weems was on oxygen and immobile with a hospice nurse at home. His caretaker, Grace Cuevas, was also by his side. On that Friday, his three children were heading to the Boynton Inlet for fresh air. Their plans changed when Weems’ hospice nurse called to say his breathing had changed, and the children should come back to say goodbye.
They made it back in time to sit with their father and tell him they loved him before he died.
“That was very good for all of us and I think for him,” Kathy Weems Schlagal, 61, said.
Besides going off to school, Weems lived in Boynton Beach his whole life. He had a love of traveling and orchids. At one point, he was told he had the largest private collection of the flowers in South Florida. He also loved water skiing and nature.
“He liked to play a lot,” Schlagal said. “He worked really hard, but he had a real zest for life.”
Weems’ health declined slowly after his wife Cecile died in October at age 86. They were married 62 years.
Her parents’ marriage is one of the many things Schlagal is proud of. Weems was in the first medi- cal school class at the University of Miami, and at one point was told he was one of a few who were still with his wife. That was rare in those days, the children said.
But, dad did have two “affairs,” Robert Weems joked.
“One was the orchids, and I think the other was, you could say, his sports cars,” he said.
Funeral services will be held Saturday at 11 a.m. at First United Methodist Church, 101 N. Seacrest Blvd.
In addition to his three children, he is survived by his siblings, Nanie Weaver, Anne Michael, Fain Weems, Dudley Weems and Meg Weems; his grandchildren, Gavin, Bradley, Julien, Emma, Carter and Anika; and his “grand-dogs,” Stella and Duncan. His sister, Julie Monahan, preceded him in death.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made in his memory to the Bethesda Hospital Foundation, the Methodist Church, or The Nature Conservancy.