Col. Everett K. Spees Jr., M.D., Ph.D., D.Div. passed away on Jan. 11, 2024, at the age of 90 in Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, after living with multiple myeloma for seven years.
Dr. Spees was born into a military family in Chanute Field, Ill., in 1933, the second child of Everett K. Spees Sr. and Maude Rexroat Spees, and grew up in Denver, Colo. He attended the University of Colorado at Boulder, and after achieving a medical degree at the age of 19 from the University of Tennessee, Everett began his career in the Army Medical Corps. He spent 20 years in the Army, attaining the rank of colonel. He continued his medical work at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, focusing on the then-new field of transplant surgery.
Later, he moved to Denver to work at University Hospital, where he helped found the kidney transplant program, and then at Presbyterian St. Luke’s. He was a founder of the Colorado transplant registry, which facilitated matching lifesaving organs with recipients, and contributed to the national system we have today. After his initial retirement from medical practice, he was called back to the Army multiple times for further surgical work, where he relished his chance to return to wearing the uniform, sharing his experience, and learning from younger colleagues, as well as transforming the lives of his patients.
A lifelong autodidact who genuinely enjoyed work, he was always learning new things and applying new skills. He studied to become a deacon (obtaining a doctor of divinity degree), and then a priest, in the Polish National Catholic Church, after retiring from medical practice. In this capacity, he held services, comforted patients with last rites, and provided counseling and storytelling to vulnerable children and teenagers.
In the last 10 years of his life, he and his wife, Ann Boyer, moved to Chilmark full-time. He became a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society, and worked intermittently as an ER physician at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. On the Island, he developed a keen interest in genealogy and family history, and conducted extensive research and writing regarding the family’s Hessian ancestry during the Revolutionary War. He was a vital and active member of a weekly writer’s group, for which he was constantly writing articles with great zest. Many of his articles were published in scholarly journals, and he continued his writing and research until the very end.
Everett was a kind, good-natured, and gentle man, with a tremendous intellectual capacity, a wealth of knowledge on numerous subjects, and a caring soul. He was a beloved father, grandfather, colleague, and friend to so many people.
Everett is survived by his children, Sally Langlois, Everett III, Robert, and Ben; his brother, Bill; his stepdaughter, Lee Scriggins; and his grandchildren, Lucy and D Scriggins, and Natasha Scriggins Punj. He was preceded in death by his wife, Ann Boyer, and stepson, Tom Scriggins.
A service was held at Abel Hill Cemetery in Chilmark on Jan. 16. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, online at https://development.themmrf.org/about.
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