1918
Stanley
2008
Stanley Friesen, M.D.
September 8, 1918 — February 28, 2008
The Zuider Zee, a rememberance of our father, Dr. Stanley R. Friesen
by Rick Friesen assisted by my brother and sisters,
Robert Friesen, Peggy Scanlon and Kathy Friesen
When my father awoke he asked for the Zuider Zee. He had to get back to the Zuider Zee. Some unfinished business. Some unfinished business with the family. The Zuider Zee, or the Southern Sea, is south of Friesland, perhaps the ancestral home of Friesens. He was awakening from a week of sedatives.
Here are the things that my father loved. The Flint Hills. The cabin in Colorado. He loved our mother, his wife, Beth. He loved teaching. He loved research. He loved music, especially piano, which he played expertly. He would have liked to have been a concert pianist and he occasionally approached that level of playing. He loved his family, us.
And he loved truth. Although he was religious, he never let superstition keep him from knowledge. If there were contradictions, he was content to live with them. He loved being a scientist. He loved the pursuit of truth. He would find it. He would let what he found guide him and was never afraid of it. In the same vein he was not afraid to change if the truth and ethics led him to it. Ethics were taken for granted. He was, I think, incapable of making an unethical choice. This was perhaps the finest gift he gave me and which he clearly gave to my brother and sisters.
Driving through the untamed and gentle spirit of the plains which are the Flint Hills of eastern Kansas he would stop and get out, he said, ?to let the wind blow all my cares away.? He especially loved those hills when he wandered them with our mother. One of our treasured photographs shows her standing in a heaving sea of natural grasses with a bouquet of freshly picked wildflowers. We went there after her funeral. It was the last time the four of us, their children, were together until dad was in the hospital with pneumonia and sepsis with the sedatives coursing through his veins dreaming of the Zuider Zee.
We were all together at the Zuider Zee in 1960 also, driving through Friesland and a lot of the rest of Europe. Another gift to us was to teach us not to be parochial, to see the wider world and yet value our roots.
He seemed to feel most a part of the earth at the cabin in Colorado. The sky, the birds, the view from the deck, sitting by the fire in his easy chair reading seemed to anchor him. It was there that the collective memory of generations past met present and future generations.
And of course he was most at home in the small towns of Kansas ? Cheney, Mt. Hope, Hillsboro. This is where he grew up, courted our mother, and is where he will be buried next to mom.
My father was born in Saskatchewan of Mennonite parents from Kansas and Manitoba. Raised in Cheney, Kansas, he married Beth Hattan of Mt. Hope, Kansas, whom he met in 5th grade, and with whom he fathered the four of us.
Medicine was near the core of who he was. He became a doctor following the example of his uncle Frank who died when dad was a boy. He attended school at Friends University, Wichita, and the University of Kansas. He obtained his MD degree in 1943, and his surgery training and PhD at the University of Minnesota. He practiced and taught surgery at Kansas University Medical Center for 39 years where he trained many surgeons, retiring in 1989 as Professor Emeritus of Surgery and History of Medicine. He was loved by his patients for his compassion and gentleness. He became an internationally respected researcher and a leader in Endocrine Surgery. He researched in London and taught all over the world. He authored several books, textbooks as well as books about the history of surgery and medicine, a book about the history of the Medical Center and a book about Erasmus.
In his later years, especially after the death of our mother, he became lonely and considerate of the temporary nature of life. When he visited me in Los Angeles he remained unimpressed with the museums, the restaurants and theatre, but cherished our excursion to Forest Lawn to find Uncle Frank?s grave. He returned to the Zuider Zee on February 28, 2008, never having fully emerged from the fog of his illness.
He lives on through the survived: a sister, Joyce Marsh; four children: Rick, Robert, Peggy, and Kathy; seven grandchildren: Laura, Betsy, Katie, Rick, Matthew, Tae and Claire, and three great grandchildren: Dean, Roy and Andrew.
by Rick Friesen assisted by my brother and sisters,
Robert Friesen, Peggy Scanlon and Kathy Friesen
When my father awoke he asked for the Zuider Zee. He had to get back to the Zuider Zee. Some unfinished business. Some unfinished business with the family. The Zuider Zee, or the Southern Sea, is south of Friesland, perhaps the ancestral home of Friesens. He was awakening from a week of sedatives.
Here are the things that my father loved. The Flint Hills. The cabin in Colorado. He loved our mother, his wife, Beth. He loved teaching. He loved research. He loved music, especially piano, which he played expertly. He would have liked to have been a concert pianist and he occasionally approached that level of playing. He loved his family, us.
And he loved truth. Although he was religious, he never let superstition keep him from knowledge. If there were contradictions, he was content to live with them. He loved being a scientist. He loved the pursuit of truth. He would find it. He would let what he found guide him and was never afraid of it. In the same vein he was not afraid to change if the truth and ethics led him to it. Ethics were taken for granted. He was, I think, incapable of making an unethical choice. This was perhaps the finest gift he gave me and which he clearly gave to my brother and sisters.
Driving through the untamed and gentle spirit of the plains which are the Flint Hills of eastern Kansas he would stop and get out, he said, ?to let the wind blow all my cares away.? He especially loved those hills when he wandered them with our mother. One of our treasured photographs shows her standing in a heaving sea of natural grasses with a bouquet of freshly picked wildflowers. We went there after her funeral. It was the last time the four of us, their children, were together until dad was in the hospital with pneumonia and sepsis with the sedatives coursing through his veins dreaming of the Zuider Zee.
We were all together at the Zuider Zee in 1960 also, driving through Friesland and a lot of the rest of Europe. Another gift to us was to teach us not to be parochial, to see the wider world and yet value our roots.
He seemed to feel most a part of the earth at the cabin in Colorado. The sky, the birds, the view from the deck, sitting by the fire in his easy chair reading seemed to anchor him. It was there that the collective memory of generations past met present and future generations.
And of course he was most at home in the small towns of Kansas ? Cheney, Mt. Hope, Hillsboro. This is where he grew up, courted our mother, and is where he will be buried next to mom.
My father was born in Saskatchewan of Mennonite parents from Kansas and Manitoba. Raised in Cheney, Kansas, he married Beth Hattan of Mt. Hope, Kansas, whom he met in 5th grade, and with whom he fathered the four of us.
Medicine was near the core of who he was. He became a doctor following the example of his uncle Frank who died when dad was a boy. He attended school at Friends University, Wichita, and the University of Kansas. He obtained his MD degree in 1943, and his surgery training and PhD at the University of Minnesota. He practiced and taught surgery at Kansas University Medical Center for 39 years where he trained many surgeons, retiring in 1989 as Professor Emeritus of Surgery and History of Medicine. He was loved by his patients for his compassion and gentleness. He became an internationally respected researcher and a leader in Endocrine Surgery. He researched in London and taught all over the world. He authored several books, textbooks as well as books about the history of surgery and medicine, a book about the history of the Medical Center and a book about Erasmus.
In his later years, especially after the death of our mother, he became lonely and considerate of the temporary nature of life. When he visited me in Los Angeles he remained unimpressed with the museums, the restaurants and theatre, but cherished our excursion to Forest Lawn to find Uncle Frank?s grave. He returned to the Zuider Zee on February 28, 2008, never having fully emerged from the fog of his illness.
He lives on through the survived: a sister, Joyce Marsh; four children: Rick, Robert, Peggy, and Kathy; seven grandchildren: Laura, Betsy, Katie, Rick, Matthew, Tae and Claire, and three great grandchildren: Dean, Roy and Andrew.
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