# Dad’s Eulogy 8/21/2025 Gary Setnik, MD, Examiner for the American Board of Emergency Medicine, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine and teacher of the year at Harvard Medical School, Chair of Emergency Medicine at Mt Auburn Hospital and Medical Director of South Middlesex EMS and Pro EMS found himself, one Saturday morning ,at remedial driving academy. He loved to tell this story, about him and the other road ragers, his tweed and their tattoos, his paisley tie and their piercings.  Why was he there?  Nominally, because he had a fender bender and two speeding tickets in a single year. But, it was really because he lived at 10 miles an hour over the speed limit, tailgating in his VW rabbit not the Porsche he always claimed to want. He could have had that Porche, but stuck with VW, Chrysler and Jeep. He couldn’t help being both the fast-moving professional he was, and also being an everyman. I bet some of those  driver reform school classmates still get holiday cards. Gary Setnik moved fast. Thankfully our lives and his energy were yolked by our mom, Susan, ending up at the same time and place but somehow at the speed of  Latin. His afterburners left his coffee undrinkable strong, his burgers well done, somehow even his ice-cream was burned. And he washed it all down with the faith he held in medicine, encapsulated in a Lipitor. This life of passion most extended to two things, family and work - snaked around a winged caduceus to form his singular and intertwined identity. He taught me, and so many, that once you made any person - a lawyer or a sawyer, a server or a CEO - into a human, you would know how to treat them. Maybe then give them 10 dollars for a bus when no one was looking.  Many former students start condolences by saying how much they learned about caring for people under him. Then they pull me aside, and in hushed tones, admit “I was a little scared of him.” Why this funny contradiction? Because he cared so much. Anything that might harm a patient or a patient’s experience actually hurt him.   And for family, nothing would get in his way. It wouldn’t be unusual for him to drive 3 hours round trip to bring Rhys the two miles home from school, then return later the same day with Rhys’s forgotten saxophone. Each of us in the family have similar stories of his overwhelming dedication. Gary and Susan co-created the world they wanted to live in. They rose with with phoenix of post-WWII America, harnessed the counter-culture of the 60s, and carried that energy into teaching and emergency medicine in Boston, and ended up in one sometimes peaceful house on Emerson Road. Their home was books, news, and travel, 60-minutes and NPR, plays and live music at the Acropolis. Their world was hopeful and trusting. Even after our house was burglarized thirty years ago, their security system remains a yellow-lab. They know all their neighbors, and their neighbors families, at a time when those relationships are a rarity. Neighbors, colleagues, friends, students, modern-family messiness, all of you are examples of his ever expanding “love bubble.”  It was critical for dad to know that he had an impact, that his life had meaning, and all of you are evidence that he did. His impact lives on in all of you and us, we inherited his faith in the power of being a healer and educator. His heavy stone made big waves when it was dropped into the surface of time and space. How can we surf his gravity waves, or even augment them?  Let’s remain inspired by his love, his generosity, his belief in our power to continue to make the world the place we want to live in. His life symbol, given by my sister at age 4 was the [Chai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chai_(symbol)), so let’s join in honoring him by saying together, - [L’chiam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toast_(honor)#L'Chaim): To life Lon Setnik, MD, FACEP, MHPE