Edwin Wyman; MGH surgeon answered global housecalls
Edwin T. Wyman Jr. was at peace in places without telephones, electricity, or running water. He was a talented surgeon who gravitated to places where natural disasters had hit, where poverty was rampant, and where people were affected by civil unrest.
Dr. Wyman spent his life in the service of others. He worked as a professor at Harvard Medical School, as an orthopedic surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital and other hospitals in Greater Boston, and as a volunteer doctor all over the world. He traveled to places such as Haiti, Nigeria, Vietnam, El Salvador, Armenia, St. Lucia, and Tanzania. He made sure his name was on the lists for on-call international disaster relief.
''He would say, 'We can never make it all better, but we can give them some hope,' " said his wife of 32 years, Lynda (Floden), referring to the poverty they saw in Haiti in the mid-1990s.
Dr. Wyman, 75, died July 16 of pancreatic cancer in his home in Weston.
Born in Brookline, he was the son of a pediatrician at Children's Hospital in Boston. He graduated from Roxbury Latin in 1948 and Harvard College in 1952. He earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1955 in an accelerated graduation program. In 1961, he joined the Naval Reserve Medical Corps and served for two years.
For the next four decades, he was on staff at MGH, retiring in 2004. He served as chief of the fracture services for 13 years. He also worked at Faulkner Hospital and New England Baptist Hospital from 1963 until 1999, and at Shriners Hospital for Children in Boston from 1968 until 1990.
''He was a very pleasant, gentle man," said Joseph Barr, an orthopedic surgeon at MGH and a partner of Dr. Wyman's for many years. ''He had a sense that he wanted doctors and patients treated fairly."
Dr. Wyman's interest in international medicine was sparked by a trip to Nigeria in 1965, when he spent six weeks with Orthopedics Overseas.
''This is why I became a doctor, so that I can help people in these places," Dr. Wyman would later say about his travels, his wife said.
The trip to Nigeria was followed by a similar one to Can Tho, Vietnam, for four months in 1969. Dr. Wyman would later recall how he treated Vietnamese soldiers on both sides of the war. He marveled at how the opposing soldiers, recovering in beds next to one another, appeared to forget their animosity.
In 1988, and again in 1989, Dr. Wyman helped with disaster relief, first in a war zone in San Salvador, El Salvador, and later in Yeravan, Armenia, which was devastated by an earthquake.
But his passion became Haiti and its people. ''He had a great respect for the culture and people of Haiti," his wife said.
From 1990 to 2000, Dr. Wyman went to Haiti for a week every year. He immersed himself in its history and music, and volunteered at Albert Schweitzer Hospital.
His wife accompanied him on several trips. ''We were in a hotel in Port-au-Prince during the violence in the mid-'90s," she said. ''We could hear the gunfire. I couldn't believe we were there, but he would have gone anyway. He would tell me we weren't in any danger, but I don't think he really believed that."
Dr. Wyman enjoyed seeing Haitians he had operated on in subsequent years, as their lives improved, she said.
He didn't just volunteer his services abroad. Dr. Wyman would also travel to the former Gardner Crippled Children's Hospital every month to volunteer his services, free of charge, to those who couldn't afford the cost of healthcare or just couldn't make the trip to Boston.
When he wasn't working, ''Dr. Ed," as he was affectionately called, liked to spend time at a remote cabin in Sebec Lake, Maine, that was accessible only by boat and had none of the comforts of home. There he could live how he loved to live: simply. He got to visit the cabin about a week before his death.
In addition to his wife, Dr. Wyman leaves four sons, Seth of Arlington, Va., Tom of West Roxbury, Mac of Cortez, Colo., and Eben of Laurel, Md.; a daughter, Molly Edwards of Wayland; and six grandchildren.
Services have been held.
