A Gentleman and Scholar

Steady Presence

Charles R. Effron ’80 MD’83, P’16
I am deeply saddened by the loss of such a great man. Stan was a father figure to me and so many others in my class. It was a welcome pleasure to join him for coffee after collecting firewood in his backyard on a cold Sunday afternoon, or years later when he hosted the late afternoon gathering at his home on a Reunion weekend.

He will long be remembered for the profound impact he had on the students and his tremendous role in the success of our Medical School. He was one of the few who truly deserved being called a gentleman and a scholar. He will be greatly missed.

Aram Arabian MD ’75 says, “[We] were in awe of the Chief for allowing each of us to pursue our goals without any badgering to lead us into a specific medical outcome such as research, primary care, or academics.” (Credit: Alpert Medical School Archives).

Human Memory

Jonathan Elion ’72 MD’75, P’05
I have a very vivid memory of that portion of the graduation ceremony where Stan was handed the list of graduates, expecting that he would use that list to call each graduate up to receive their diploma. Upon receiving the list, Stan gave that indescribable smile that he had, put the list aside (as it was totally unnecessary!), then called each of us up to the stage with proper pronunciation to boot! And of course, for the rest of his life he could tell you all of those names along with where they lived and what they were up to.

A Real Mensch

Joseph Friedman, MD, Professor of Neurology
My first interaction with Stan Aronson occurred a few months after I arrived in Providence in 1982. I had never heard of him. I was paged while making rounds in the hospital, and this quite distinguished voice introduced himself as a part-time physician who was acting as a neurology consultant at the Brown student health service—who wanted to give up the position, asking if I’d be willing to take over.

I later learned that Stan, an eminent neuropathologist, who had also spent many summers as a doctor at his daughters’ sleep-away camp, had been “helping out” at student health service because Rhode Island had a shortage of neurologists at the time. He hadn’t told me that he had recently retired as dean of the Medical School, nor did he tell me that he was traveling to Boston to get an MPH at Harvard.

I will always remember Stan as the embodiment of a polymath, a person who knows everything about everything, yet he was caring, humble, and anxious to help others. If there’s one word to remember him by, he would probably be most proud to be recalled as a mensch, a Yiddish word that simply means “man,” but really conveys a lot more, encompassing terms like caring, smart, responsible, anxious to help others, leading by example—in short, “role model.”