Memorial Open Thread

Thanks to the approximately400 friends and family who were able to attend the memorial service. We will be posting photos, video and stories over the next week. Please feel free to post any of your own as comments to this post. We're also looking for a way for people to share photos and videos if you have a suggestion.

For now, here is the slideshow, Sarah's "Unofficial Obituary of Philip Alan Role" and the poem that Bram wrote and read at the service:

The Unofficial Obituary of Philip Alan Role

Written June 13, 2010, by Phil’s daughter Sarah

Phil Role, devoted husband, father, friend, physician, cyclist, pilot, outdoor enthusiast, conservationist, food fanatic and citizen died at home, without regrets, on June 11^th, after defying Multiple Myeloma for six years. In battling cancer and in good health, Phil embodied the ideal of living life to the fullest, no matter the odds. He leaves behind a shining legacy of people and places transformed by his love, his exemplar actions, his generously dispensed prescriptions for living, his book recommendations, innumerous shared meals, adventures and misadventures. As a friend succinctly stated, “Phil Role was an institution.”

Phil was born and raised near Boston and took full advantage of what he considered New England’s finest offerings, namely its schools and Atlantic coastline. He attended Boston Latin, Milton Academy and Harvard University and made headlines surfing during hurricanes. But the west coast beckoned and in the summer of ’68 he heeded its call and drove across country, chasing better surf, cowboy fantasies and Mary Catherine Streiff, a beautiful woman from Boise, Idaho. High on love, sunshine and perhaps other substances, he returned to Boston at the end of the summer and graduated from Harvard in ’71.

The couple married in ’73 and spent the next several years establishing medical careers and a family. They spent a year in Marin County, California where Phil worked as an orderly. They later moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where both attended Emory University. Mary Catherine attended nursing school while Phil earned his Medical Degree and completed an Internal Medicine residency. His two sons, Nathaniel and Abraham, were born in Atlanta. Phil then served in the Navy to repay his Med school scholarship. He was stationed at the Naval Hospital in Bremerton, WA. He fell in love with the Pacific Northwest and it was there that he and Mary Catherine completed their family with the birth of their third child, daughter Sarah.

After fulfilling his Navy obligation, Phil moved his family to Lewiston, ID, where he practiced Internal Medicine for 11 years. The Role’s Lewiston house served as base-camp for all kinds of adventures: rafting the Salmon River; backpacking the Seven Devils and numerous other ranges; powder skiing in McCall, road-biking; attending rodeos, county fairs, and pow-wows; micro-farming; local politicking, notoriously wild Halloween parties. The Lewiston era came to an end in ’93 when Phil returned to medical school to change specialties. He completed an anesthesia residency at the University of Colorado in Denver.

When he finished the program in Denver, Phil and family returned to Idaho, this time to Sandpoint. Here he ran the Anesthesiology Department at Bonner General Hospital; joined local food, wine, reading and bike clubs; skied Schweitzer; continued his yearly pilgrimages to the Salmon River; and perhaps most importantly, realized his life-long dream of becoming a pilot. Flying quickly joined outdoor recreation, eating and friendship in becoming another of Phil’s top reasons to live.

In 2004, at the height of his medical and aviation career, Phil was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a rare blood cancer. At first the disease hardly slowed him down. He left Bonner General but continued to work as a “Locum Tenens” physician, accepting temporary anesthesia jobs at hospitals located throughout the north- and southwest, including a Navajo hospital. He loved locums work. He could commute to work by plane, make new friends in his locums communities and visit old friends en route from job to job.

Later, fighting the Multiple Myeloma occupied more of Phil’s time and energy. He underwent not one but two stem cell transplants, subjecting himself to extended sojourns at the National Institute of Health in Baltimore, MD and the sometimes rigid-to-the-point-of-inhumane protocol of the trials. He was eternally grateful to his sister Nancy, who donated her stem cells for these procedures, and to Nancy’s friend Chinky who opened her home near the Institute to him and Mary Catherine. After the second transplant failed to achieve long term remission, Phil endured countless rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, determined to exhaust every available option.

Never give up, always try harder, go farther, do more, learn more, eat more, love more – no one, least of all those who felt overwhelmed by his style, will argue that taking everything to the limits was Phil Role’s MO. He loved to chide, “Everything in moderation, including moderation”...the latter part of the adage being key. As much as Phil espoused moderation in all things, he was anything but moderate in his enjoyment of and dedication to people, places and his passions. Right up to his death he exploited every possible opportunity to challenge and inspire his family and friends by striving to live up to his own standards of excellence.

Phil Role, you were a Tour de Force. May each of us find the strength to sustain your incredible momentum - or at the very least, may our memories of you compel us to make the most of our lives.

My Dad…. A Day in the Life – Bram Role 2010

Up at 4 and out the door to run or bike or swim
And back at 6 for an oatmeal fix and out the door again

He arrived of course on a 2-wheeled horse that he rode in sleet or rain
To spend all day with the sick and weak - he tried to ease their pain

With a voice stern but caring he’d say without swearing if YOU want to live a bit longer
Quit the smoke, quit the drink, I know and I think that soon you will surely be stronger

At mid-day beware – no FREE food dare, hide from his thirst or his hunger
At half past 2 what else should he do but fly through the high blue yonder

There’s nothing like flying but there’s no denying that dinner’s the ultimate goal
So back in the kitchen he’s thawing that chicken and searching around for a bowl

Where’s M.C.? Upstairs beading , the bread machine kneading and the white wine is chilly and cold

Some good friends arrive now with hors d’oeurves and cocktail - damn good was the dinner I’m told

Just after nine they’re feeling quite fine but HIS eyes begin to stay closed
But mom she’s a talkin’ even as they start walkin’ out the door with polite repose

So another day ended with no minute stranded
No seconds abandoned; and no time for Idle or Woe