By Reid R. Frazier
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Dr. Eugene Joseph Thompson was a cardiologist whose penchant for recognizing his patients' needs helped him heal those who bore the worst scars of our nation's conflicts.
Dr. Thompson, a former chief of medicine in Veterans Affairs hospitals in Butler and Pittsburgh, died Saturday, March 5, 2005 at his O'Hara home of heart failure. He was 83.
He was chief of medicine at the VA hospital in Butler from 1977 to 1982 and held the same post at the VA facility on Highland Drive in East Liberty from 1982 to 1987.
Dr. Thompson was part of a team of physicians at the VA Medical Center on Highland Drive that pioneered treatment of former prisoners of war by caring for veterans of the Bataan-Corregidor Death March, said his wife, Marcia Pena Thompson.
"He was a very compassionate person," she said. "He felt they were a group of veterans that had largely been ignored."
Thomas Poetain, who worked with Dr. Thompson at the Butler VA facility, said Dr. Thompson's work with prisoners of war helped set national standards on treating the lingering effects of wartime imprisonment.
The veterans Dr. Thompson treated were still coping with the psychological effects of their imprisonment, as well as medical effects such as malaria, malnutrition and frostbite, Poetain said.
"He was able to bring a medical expertise" to the treatment of prisoners of war, Poetain said. "You had to be a progressive physician in order to be able to do that."
Born in Yonkers, N.Y., Thompson graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx in 1939. He attended City College of New York for two years before enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Corps at the start of World War II, his wife said.
During the war, Dr. Thompson was an aerial navigation instructor at Selman Field in Monroe, La., and attained the rank of first lieutenant.
After World War II, Dr. Thompson completed his undergraduate degree at City College and received a medical degree from Boston University Medical School in 1950.
After completing a residency in cardiology at Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital and Metropolitan Hospital, both in New York City, Dr. Thompson ran a private practice in Queens, his wife said.
In the early 1970s, Dr. Thompson entered the VA medical system, working as chief of cardiology at a VA facility in Brooklyn, before being transferred to Butler.
After 10 years in Western Pennsylvania, Dr. Thompson was appointed chief medical officer of a VA outpatient clinic in Canton, Ohio. After his retirement in 1991, the Thompsons moved back to the Pittsburgh area, settling in O'Hara.
Dr. Thompson enjoyed music and solving math problems. He was fluent in Spanish, spoke a little French and Italian, and loved world travel.
Dr. Thompson is survived by his wife, Marcia Pena Thompson, of O'Hara; four sons, David of Sunnyvale, Calif., Mark of New Milford, N.J., Christopher of New York City, and Lawrence of Clovis, Calif.; two daughters, Stefanie Eisner of West Palm Beach, Fla. and Claudia Shukis of San Jose, Calif.; three step-daughters, Gwendolyn Ross Donahue of Riverhead, N.Y., Katherine Ross Murphy of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and Margaret Ross Coakley of Plainview, N.Y.; five grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and seven stepgrandchildren.
Interment will be Wednesday at Long Island National Cemetery, Farmingdale, N.Y. A Mass of Christian Burial will be held Wednesday at St. Brigid's Roman Catholic Church in Westbury, N.Y.
The family requests donations be made to UNICEF, 333 E. 38th St., New York, NY, 10016, or Family Hospice and Palliative Care, 5001 Baum Blvd., Pittsburgh, PA, 15213.
©2005 Tribune-Review Publishing Company, Pittsburgh, PA