The family wishes to thank all the many friends who helped us during his illness. Just shy of seventy five years, Rick’s was a life well lived and loved. Our family says goodbye to our gentle hero and role model with heavy hearts. He and Paula took their Bike Fridays to Spain to bike the Camino de Santiago, and did other biking trips with friends in Holland and England. Many friendships evolved during these travels. These early trips included time off for family adventures, homeschooling, and learning about other cultures. Sabbatical leaves were welcome respites, with travel continuing to set the tone for many working medical experiences in New Zealand, Barbuda/Antigua, and Australia. Over the years, he added many creative structures to the property that overlooked the Sound with the Olympic Mountains in the background. Taking another year’s sabbatical, he helped from the milling of the lumber for the house from the forest to the finishing details of the indoor trim. Rick’s greatest building project was a new house on Puget Sound. The apple trees there provided fabulous apple cider pressing parties with swings in the barn and hidey holes in the hay bales. He and Paula bought an old farmhouse with a great barn, and his engineering skills emerged as he made it into a wonderful home over the years. Although working long hours, Rick always made time for his family, was a loving and involved father, and worked hard to participate in his children’s many activities.īuilding things brought Rick immense joy. During this time he and Paula began their own family, adding two children, Jocelyn and Jordan. Adored by his patients, he was constantly hailed while out and about. He was a compassionate, caring, and detailed doctor, who enjoyed the problem solving that medicine demanded. He loved the idea of taking care of entire families, and delivered babies for the first fifteen years of his practice. Rick practiced family medicine in Olympia for over thirty years. While in Singapore, he accepted a job in family practice with Group Health in Olympia. After Rick’s residency, they took a sabbatical year to travel around the world with packs on their backs, spending three months in India at the hill station of Mussoorie, where Rick practiced medicine, and Paula taught. They moved to Rochester, New York, where he was a resident in the family medicine program. He and Paula were married at Villa Montalvo, close to her teaching assignment in Los Altos. Graduating from Stanford, Rick attended medical school at the University of California in San Francisco. Separated at the end of Rick’s sophomore year of high school, they corresponded over the years and met again in London. Rick and Paula had their first date at the Valentine’s Day Sweetheart Dance in junior high school. An apt student, great baseball and tennis player, dancer, and lover of the details of science, he was also a fun and well-liked guy. Rick’s formative years were spent in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he met his future wife, Paula, in a kindergarten tap dancing class. He passed away November 12, 2022, from complications of a stem cell transplant for acute myeloid leukemia. Finch, cherished husband and beloved father. It is with great sadness that our family announces the death of Richard M.
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