Irving Schulman Guestbook

I fondly remember Dr. Schulman. He was the Chair when I started here 26 years ago. He would drop by the various Pediatric Offices on a weekly basis just to say hello. Later, after he retired, I would see him a Grand Rounds and he would always greet me with a warm smile and a "classic remark". He didn't miss a thing.

Dr. Schulman played such an incredible role in my life. He hired me for a position at Children's Hospital which led to a 20-year career. He taught us all so much and constantly charmed us with his humor. It was always fun to watch him be tough with residents or staff, then turn into a total teddy bear the minute a child was in his presence. He was fair, honest, strong. I remember being at a Medical Board meeting in the late 1980's, listening to him speak, and thinking "now here's a man with so much integrity and honesty, I'd love to work for him someday." Fortunately I had that opportunity and he became my mentor and my friend. He will surely be missed.

I frist met Dr. Schulman 36 years ago as a Stanford medical student on the pediatric clerkship. It was the first of many encounter which occurred over my life that shaped my career path from medical student to resident to fellow to finally a Stanford pediatric faculty. I will remember him as a formal but caring individual, who loved being a physician and teacher. He never lost his "New York" personality with his quick wit that kept us all on our toes. Yet, his commitment to excellence in clinical care modeled for us the role of a pediatrician which influenced all of his students, residents and faculty. I look at pictures of my Stanford residency classes when Dr. Schulman was chairman, and see colleagues who are now clinical leaders, professors, chairs, and deans, and think how he help shape all of us. It recognizes the important role that Dr. Schulman play in molding the next generation of pediatric leaders.
Alicia and I sent our sympathies to his family

I was a pediatric resident at Stanford from 1988 to 1991. I have always considered the opportunity to train under Dr. Schulman a great privilege and an immense good fortune.

As Department Chair and Chief of Staff, Dr. Schulman was a daily presence on the ward and he took a personal interest in the patients. More than once I heard him remind the residents to think of the entire family, saying, "Remember, the patient is someone's child."

Dr. Schulman cared immensely about maintaining collegial relations with the community pediatricians. He selected community pediatricians to serve as co-teaching attendings on the ward, and this was a valued experience for the residents and the attendings. The lasting warm relationship between the community pediatricians and the hospital and faculty is a legacy we owe to Dr. Schulman. We also are indebted for his tireless work that led to the building of Lucile Packard Children's Hospital.

I was lucky to meet Dr. Irving Schulman at the Packard Foundation in Los Altos. He was editing an edition of The Future of Children on Adoption while I was editing an edition on Children and Divorce. I enjoyed his cheerful personality. It was a pleasure to work with someone who shared with me the love of children.

Probably unbeknownst to his Stanford colleagues (though quite well known to his magnificent and generous wife, Naomi, and their wonderful children, John and Margaret), my Cousin Irving Schulman was a much beloved and revered figure among pretty much all of the staff and a good many of the members of the Bar Association of San Francisco, where I worked for mamy years. Year in and year out, I invariably sought, and always obtained, Iring's occasionally amused but unfailngly sympathetic, calm, patient, caring and smart advice, not only about my own various ailments, large and mostly small, but equally with respect to those of a seemingly endless stream of men, women and children among my family, friends and colleagues in the greater San Francisco legal community.

Beyond this, of course, Irving simply was my hero--not really become of his obvious transcendence as the best and the brightest in the national medical firmament, but rather because of the warmth, love and support that he and Naomi invariably extended to me, whether via a long line of Thanksgiving dinners where they included a lonely, hitherto almost unknown family member who suddenly appeared at their doorstep as a newcomer to the Bay Area, or, as time went on, as my most loyal fans and advisors through the vicissitudes of my personal and professional life. Irving was simply a star-- the best of family and the best of friends, a man of quick wit and wisdom who was the closest link I had among the New York relatives of his first cousin, the equally brilliant and beautiful Georgetown Medical School Professor, my mother Dr. Estelle Ramey, of whose own career as a nationally prominent feminist spokesperson Irving was inordinately proud. I am so saddened by his death, but pleased and moved by the testimonials from so many of the thousands of lives he touched.

i was saddened to hear from mother, phil, and @stanford about dr. schulman's passing. i'll never forget dr. schulman's attitude and passion for pediatrics, which translated to an internal recognition of my disdain for pediatrics.

that being said, dr. schulman was an exemplar of the type of man, physican, professor, and friend that his colleague dr. shumway was. these are both men who were of a different generation of physicians and surgeons concerned with the human condition rather than bottom lines.

we'll all miss you dr. schulman.

I was fortunate to being a Chief Resident with Dr. Schulman at the University of Illinois in 1968.Like many who knew him I have many great "Dr. Schulman" stories.One of my favorites occurred when i told him that I was going to the U.S.Naval Hospital in Long Beach,Ca.after my Residency and he told me that you have to be crazy to go live in California.Dr. Schulman was by far the best mentor/teacher i ever had and his pediatric knowledge not only in hematology/oncology but general pediatics was amazing.Pediatric rounds was truly a wonderful experience as we saw the breath of his knowledgs,his compassion for the patients and their parents and his 100% support of his housestaff.He also did all this with his great "New York" sense of humor.He will be missed

It was a very great honor to have had Dr Schulman as my father in-law.

He loved his family deeply, and was very involved in the lives of his children and grandchildren
till the very end.

He was kind and gentle, proud and private, and someone whom fanfare was not required.

He had the Wife a man could ever ask for, and loved her for nearly 60 years.

But what meant the most to me, was how I was not only embraced but recognized as family by both Dr and Mrs Schulman from the start, and for that, I am truly humbled.

Godspeed Dr Schulman.... Irving....Dad!!!

I too am saddened to hear of Dr. Schulman's passing. I first met him in 1963 as a Junior Medical Sudent at the University of Illinois. His presence and teaching ability in the lecture hall as well as the bedside was inspiring and convinced me that Pediatrics was the area of medicine I wanted to follow. I was Dr.Schulman's first straight Pediatric Intern in 1965 and enjoyed that year and the two years of residency immensely. I re-connected with Dr. Schulman in 1985 when our oldest son matriculated as an undergraduate at Stanford. Irving took him under his wing and connected him with David Stevenson during his last two undergraduate years to work in his laboratory in protoporphin usage for hyperbilirubinemia. I know this backround was instramental in his acceptance to Medical School.

Dr. Schulman's legacy is carried on in the hundreds of physicians he has trained over the years. He set high standards for good care, ethics and compassion. The world is a better place for his passing thru it and he will be missed by all of us who were lucky enough to have known him. My best to his family.

I was saddened to hear of the passing of Dr. Schulman. I have many fond memories of Dr. Schulman, both as a medical student at the University of Illinois, College of Medicine (as a student) and as a Pediatric Resident at Illinois Research Hospital in Chicago during his tenure as Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics in the 1960s. I would like to share some of these special remembrances.
Dr. Schulman was always an innovator. During my third year of medical school he instituted a new program of selecting a very few 3rd year students and having them perform as a pediatric intern for a quarter term of school. Of course, they were well supervised, but the experience and education received was invaluable. I was fortunate to be one of these students.
I did a rotating internship in California, but came back to Illinois Research Hospital in Chicago for my pediatric residency because of Dr. Schulman. He would never turn down a request for help on the care of a patient, even if those phone calls were in the middle of the night on a patient from a specialty unrelated to hematology. I would present the child's complex urgent problem, and, no matter what specialty was involved, his response would be, "I am not a pulmonologist (or allergist, cardiologist, or whatever specialty I was calling him about), but ..." and proceed to give detailed advice that was rarely incorrect.
It was not unusual to see him "pop in" on a Saturday night if he was anywhere near the hospital just to see how everything was going on service.
He was the first to understand that community emergency room treatment of children would be improved if residents were allowed to moonlight there. He encouraged this despite a ban on residents moonlighting.
Although he could sometimes be sarcastic to residents, he pushed us to perform better. He was always gracious to any community pediatrician, even if he knew their level of care was not optimal.
In an act of irony, Dr. Schulman always made fun of living in California. Two years later he left Chicago to Chair the Pediatric Department at Stanford.
He was a great teacher, lecturer, and mentor and greatly influenced my style of teaching and communicating information. He will be missed by many.
Harry Pellman, MD

Just wanted to share my gratitude to someone I never met but made a substantial impact on my life. 3 years ago, we had to admit our daughter to the hospital for open heart surgery. The only saving graces of that preparation were (1) wonderful family and friends and (2) knowing we had one of the top pediatric children's hospitals (and specifically heart surgery centers) in our own back yard with Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. Thank you, Dr. Schulman, for your compassion and your tireless efforts to make this hospital a reality. There must be thousands like me who never met you but are forever grateful.

Those of us who grew up in the field of pediatric medicine under Dr Schulman's wing had an amazing mentor and role model. He had an immense breadth of knowledge which he artfully mined as he helped us unravel the clues to the most complicated diagnostic mysteries. His teaching rounds were full of wit and wisdom and while he demanded the best from his young doctors, he never embarassed us. By remembering important things about our lives, Dr Schulman made us feel that he cared not just about our skills, but about our wellbeing. His kindness to the patient and empathy for the family brought a smile to may young faces and relief to their parents as they realized they were in the best of hands.

I will miss Dr Schulman and remember him with great respect and affection.

Dr Schulman was in Illinois when I first heard of him, and then I met him again in California when I was a social worker at the Children's Hospital and he was Chairman of Pediatrics. Dr Schulman showed great interest in everything that was going on in the hospital and had a wry, occasionally caustic sense of humor about the absurdity of politics at the hospital and life in general. He genuinely cared about the patients, the housestaff and the milieu that we all worked in. I counted him as a big supporter of social work -- and as a fair and honest man. It was a privilege to work with him. He was a role model and mentor to a generation of us, and I will miss him. I am sure we all have some "Schulman" stories to recount, and they remain some of my fondest memories of growing up in pediatrics.

I first met Irv as a medical student. I went in to talk with him about residency programs in pediatrics. I told him I wanted a residency with a strong community health program. He asked If I was considering the University of Illinois. I told him I didn't want a research oriented program that focused on "rare bird" diagnoses. He promptly told me that I had my head up my --- and that he could get me into any program in the country just by making a phone call --but he wasn't going to do it. he then proceeded to guide me to the University of Rochester which was a perfect fit for me and provided me with important sense of direction for my professional career. For me it was the essence of Irv, hard nosed, ruthlessly honest but above all wise and caring. I will miss him.

David Bergman