1930s
Lewis Standish Rathbun ’35
Lewis Standish Rathbun ’35, a physician known for his compassionate dedication and many medical benefactions to his community, was born on Oct. 12, 1913, in Canandaigua, N.Y. The youngest of three brothers, all Hamilton graduates, he was a son of Alonzo S., a flour miller, and Grace Douglass Rathbun. He grew up in the farm community of Phelps, near Canandaigua, where his interest in a medical career began in boyhood when he accompanied the family doctor on house calls and became fascinated with the cases the doctor discussed in the car between stops. On College Hill, Lew Rathbun joined Theta Delta Chi. Besides pursuing his premedical studies, he was a hurdler on the track team, lettering in the sport, and known as a “carefree chappie” whose talents included the knack of finessing at bridge.
Lew Rathbun went on to Harvard Medical School determined to become “the best doctor” he could be. While at Harvard, he chose obstetrics and gynecology as his specialty, and delivering babies became his life’s work. During his two-year internship at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.Y., he met Elizabeth Hunt, an operating room nurse, on a blind date. They were married on Sept. 14, 1940, the year after he received his M.D. degree.
Having completed his residency at hospitals in Boston, Dr. Rathbun delivered his first baby in a tenement in that city. Called into military service in 1944 as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps, he was assigned to the Pacific theatre during World War II. While he was on a PT tender in the New Guinea and Philippine campaigns, his vessel was struck by a Japanese suicide bomber, which Lt. Rathbun was fortunate to survive without injury.
Released from the Navy in 1946, he engaged in a group practice in Rockford, Ill., for a year before moving with his wife and three young daughters to Asheville, N.C. There he would practice for almost 40 years until his retirement in 1986. During those years he delivered more than 5,000 babies and performed numerous surgeries. He served as chief of staff of both Asheville hospitals, Mission and St. Joseph’s, and was elected president of the North Carolina Obstetrics and Gynecology Society as well as the Buncombe County Medical Society.
Among Dr. Rathbun’s many contributions to community health care was his establishment of Asheville’s first prenatal clinic for indigent women. It served the medical needs of the poor regardless of race. He also founded and chaired the board of Life After Cancer, a counseling center for cancer patients, and regularly conducted free support group sessions on Saturday mornings, his day off. It later became part of Mission Hospital, and he was gratified to see his counseling innovations validated by research. Honored by the Buncombe County Medical Society in 1979 with its Outstanding Physician Award, he continued to keep up on advances in cancer treatment and the latest research for years after his retirement.
In 1994, Adelaide Key, a local philanthropist and cancer survivor, learned of Dr. Rathbun’s contributions, especially in improving women’s health, and established a hospitality facility at Mission Hospital where patients and their visiting families could stay without charge. It was named the Rathbun Wellness Center (now Mission Rathbun House) in his honor. Further honors long after his retirement included the Founders Day Award from Mission Hospital in 2006 and recognition as one of Asheville’s “Living Treasures” in 2011.
In mid-career, for relaxation, Lew Rathbun took up watercolor painting as well as nature photography and became quite accomplished in both media. His paintings were exhibited in several individual-artist shows and won national awards from the American Physicians Art Association. He also enjoyed time on the water, having learned to sail as a boy in New York’s Finger Lakes region. As respite from his busy practice, he would go on cruising, sailing and fishing vacations to Upstate New York or Hilton Head Island. He even canoed in remote areas of Canada’s Algonquin Park and, in his early 80s, joined the crew of a sailboat crossing the Atlantic to the Azores.
Dr. Rathbun, former chairman of the board of the Asheville Art Museum and an elder of the First Presbyterian Church of Asheville, was also an ardently devoted and generously supportive Hamiltonian who for many years assisted the College with its fundraising activities. Well into his 90th decade, he looked back on his long life and career in a memoir, A Doctor All My Life, published in 2009. In it, his selfless dedication to his profession and above all the welfare of his patients clearly shines through.
Lewis S. Rathbun died on April 11, 2015, at his home in an Asheville retirement community, at the age of 101. He is survived by his wife of 74 years. Also surviving are their three daughters, Alexandra, Linda and Laurel, as well as five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his brothers Herbert D. ’26 in 1985 and Richard L. Rathbun ’28 in 1997.
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Robert Oscar Hahn ’38
Robert Oscar Hahn ’38, of Aptos, Calif., a teacher, leading Upton Sinclair scholar and lifelong peace activist, was born on Oct. 1, 1916, in Utica, N.Y. He was the son of Oscar P. Hahn, an electric meter repairman, and the former Louise Knaus, a stenographer, both of whom had emigrated to the U.S. from Germany in 1905. Bob Hahn was eager to teach even as a child when he would give lessons to other poor immigrant children in his neighborhood. At Hamilton, he majored in biology and history, joined the Squires Club and explored his interest in theatre as a member of the Charlatans.
Bob Hahn, a conscientious objector during World War II, earned his master’s degree in speech education in 1947 from Syracuse University. For some years afterward, he taught at Middlebury College and at the middle- and high-school levels in Newburgh, N.Y., before his two aunts invited him to visit them in Glendale, Calif. He abandoned New York State’s cold, snowy winters for good and made California his permanent home. Bob Hahn began teaching in 1948 at what was then Antelope Valley Junior College in Lancaster, a city in the western Mojave Desert. There, in 1950, he married Genevieve Smith, a teacher. Even with the responsibilities of a growing family, he drove 70 miles each way to Los Angeles three nights a week to the University of Southern California to pursue his doctorate in secondary and higher education, which he received in 1957.
Until the early 1970s, Dr. Hahn was a part-time instructor at Los Angeles City College and a professor at what is now California State University at Los Angeles. His area of research focused on “teaching teachers how to teach,” as he described it, and he coordinated an in-residence program with disadvantaged youth and the School Without Walls program at Pasadena Public Schools. He wrote several books and journal articles about teaching and shared his expertise in Peru on a Fulbright grant and at an international symposium in Europe. He also kept up his interest in the performing arts by directing the Theater Americana while his wife, an accomplished artist, served as scenery designer.
Inspired by his students’ research on Upton Sinclair’s anti-poverty campaign during his run for governor of California in the 1930s, Dr. Hahn eventually became statewide chairman of an organization that promoted Sinclair, including serving 10 years as publisher of the Upton Sinclair Quarterly. He collected a sizeable amount of Sinclair’s writings and memorabilia, which he later contributed to U.C. Santa Cruz and Hamilton. A peace activist throughout his life, Bob Hahn was part of a group that for seven years held weekly “silent vigils” of protest against the war in Vietnam. When he retired in 1980, he took part in weekly peace vigils with a group of fellow Quakers. The vigils continued through the Gulf and Iraq conflicts. He became a member of the Santa Cruz Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. During worship his “vocal ministry” was mostly about child hunger, poverty and lack of educational opportunities. For more than a decade following his retirement he worked as a substitute teacher. Into his 90s, he would occasionally play a song — the same song, “Smiles” — on his baby grand piano. He kept up his walks along Rio Del Mar Beach until his last year.
Robert O. Hahn, who maintained ties to Hamilton throughout his life, died on Aug. 4, 2011, a few months shy of his 95th birthday, in Aptos, Calif. In addition to his wife, survivors include his two sons, Christopher and Peter, and a granddaughter.
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