Clement A. Hiebert, 82; Mainer was surgeon and writer

Clement A. Hiebert served as staff director before becoming the chief of surgery of Maine Medical Center.

Clement A. Hiebert's friends often called him a Renaissance man. And though the former chief of surgery of Maine Medical Center was good at almost everything, his wife said, what he loved most was helping people.

"Being a surgeon and caring for his patients was really his life's purpose," said May Cameron Hiebert of Yarmouth, Maine. "He loved that. He was never bored a day in his life."

Dr. Hiebert died July 3 of complications of Parkinson's disease at the Hawthorne House nursing home in Freeport. He was 82.

He was born in Boston and lived there until he was 5, when his family moved to Lewiston, Maine. He was an Eagle Scout and graduated from Lewiston High School in 1943.

Dr. Hiebert's studies at Bowdoin College were interrupted when he was drafted during World War II, his wife said. He served in the Navy for two years, and then returned to Bowdoin. He graduated in 1947.

He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1951 and did his postgraduate internship and residency at Massachusetts General Hospital.

After completing his residency, Dr. Hiebert moved abroad to continue his studies. In 1958, he was a Harvard Research Fellow in Cambridge, England. That year, he married MaryAnn Tremaine, a union that ended in divorce.

He also spent a summer in Newfoundland with his friend Gerald Foster, the former faculty dean for admissions at Harvard Medical School.

"We were working as doctors," Foster said. "Clem had to deliver a set of twins at home. He was pretty nervous about it, and the mother talked him through it. And when he was done, the mother named one of her children after him."

He returned to the states in 1960, when he began working at Maine Medical Center. He performed thoracic and heart surgeries.

In the mid-1960s, Dr. Hiebert served on the S.S. Hope hospital ship to Africa and Asia.

At Maine Medical, he was as staff director before becoming the chief of surgery in 1986. After retiring in 1990, he served as chairman emeritus of the department of surgery until his death.

Dr. W. Hardy Hendren, former chief of surgery at Children's Hospital in Boston and a close friend of Dr. Hiebert's, said Dr. Hiebert was constantly striving for ways to improve his field.

"He was a wonderful person," Hendren said. "He was a fine surgeon and he was a fine thinker, and he always had a bent for blazing new pathways for his surgical work."

Dr. Hiebert was also a dedicated skier, those close to him said. He became a certified instructor and gave lessons to disadvantaged children.

In addition to his medical work, Dr. Hiebert dabbled in writing. In 2003, Blue Publications in Portland published "Seldom Come By," a memoir Dr. Hiebert wrote while a Rockefeller Foundation scholar-in-residence in Bellagio, Italy, about his experiences in Newfoundland.

In addition to his wife, Dr. Hiebert leaves two sons, Timothy of Providence and John of Wayland; three daughters, Sarah Flowers of Oakland, Calif., Kirsti Morse of Yarmouth, Maine, Amy Murphy of Warren, R.I.; two sisters, Ruth Davis of Brooksville, Maine, and Dorothy Odell of Belfast, Maine; a brother, Gordon of Alexandria, Va.; and seven grandchildren.

Services have been held.