| Event |
Date |
Details |
| Birth |
ABT 1912 |
|
| Death |
|
|
| Census |
6 JAN 1920 |
Place: Chicago, Cook, Illinois
- Source:
- 1920 IL Federal Census
Quality: Secondary
Source Text: Roll: T625_322; Page: 1B; Enumeration District: 780; Image: 740
6 Jan 1920; Census Place: Chicago Ward 13, Cook (Chicago), Illinois
3710 Polk Street, dwelling 10, family 18
Stein, Morrie, head, owns with mortgage, 43, imm 1890 naturalized, lit, b R
ussia of Russian parents speaking Russian, speaks English, tinner in mf
g co for wages
Sarah, wife, 38, imm 1892 naturalized, lit, b Russia of Russian parents s
peaking Russian, speaks English
Joe, son, 16, single, in school, lit, b IL, speaks English, attending s
chool
Florence, dau, 10, single, in school, lit, b IL, speaks English, attend
ing school
Albert, son, 8, single, in school, lit, b IL, speaks English, attending s
chool
Muriel, dau, 3, single, b IL
|
| Census |
15 APR 1930 |
Place: Chicago, Cook, Illinois
- Source:
- 1930 IL Federal Census
Quality: Secondary
Source Text: Roll: 490; Page: 12A; Enumeration District: 1779; Image: 1029.0.
15 April 1930; Census Place: Chicago, Cook, Illinois 47 ward
aaprtment hotel 4531-4533 [N Ashland av?], dwelling 56, family 270
Stein, Morris B, head, rents $1583.00, radio, 53, married age 26, lit, b L
ithuania of Lithuanian parents speaking Jewish, imm 1890, naturalized, s
peaks English, mananger of apartment hotel, for wages, working, not a v
eteran
Sarah, wife, 47, married age 19, lit, b Russia of Russian parents speak
ing Jewish, imm 1888, naturalized, speaks English, manager of apartment h
otel for wages
Albert - ab, son, 18, single, in school, b IL, speaks English, no job
Muriel, daughter, 13, single, in school, b IL, speaks English
|
| Retirement |
19 FEB 2006 |
Place: Chicago, Cook, Illinois
- Source:
- Newspaper article
Page: February 19, 2006 Chicago Tribune (IL)
Quality: Secondary
Source Text: In the very end, after 70 years on the stethoscope, 66 of those listeni
ng to the heart sounds of children, Dr. Albert Stein, 94, lifted the le
ft middle finger of Batya Meyers and chased away all the ghosts that ha
d followed her into Exam Room No. 6.
There was a white lump of flesh on that finger, hard as a dried bean, d
own near where the finger joins up with the rest of the hand. Before co
ming to Stein, poor Batya, who is 15, had been told she'd need to have h
er hand sliced open by a surgeon. She'd been told it probably wasn't ca
ncer.
And her mother, Miriam, who had been entrusting her five children to St
ein since he picked up a subtle diagnosis on her now 28-year-old son th
at other doctors had missed, was taking Batya straight to the master. N
o messing around with her baby's middle finger.
Well, breezing right through the diagnosis, a textbook "thickening of t
he proximal tendon," Stein pronounced his prognosis and prescription: "
It's not a tumor or anything. You probably got it swinging from the raf
ters," he quipped, a smile washing across his face. "It'll go away even
tually. Give it time. In the mean-time, wear gloves when it's cold outs
ide. And do warm soaks 10 minutes a day."
And with that simple case, and that uncommon brand of common sense that h
as been calming parents and kids for the better part of a century, Doc S
tein called it a career.
Batya was his last patient on his last day of 70 years as a doctor, and t
he last 60 of those in the West Rogers Park office of Northshore Pediat
ric Associates, surely one of the longest-running practices around.
Back when Stein started in pediatrics, polio was still a scourge. Penic
illin wasn't yet in the doctor's black bag. Nor were any antibiotics, f
or that matter. Diphtheria, tetanus and polio vaccines were still years a
way; it would be decades before other vaccines.
Quarantine was a doctor's first and last resort for the highly contagio
us, wholly un-preventable diseases rampant in the 1930s: smallpox, scar
let fever and whooping cough, a deadly trinity.
House calls were the order of the day, with two or three before Stein g
ot to the office at 9 in the morning, and stretching for hours after di
nner into the night. He easily clocked 15 or 20 a day. And he kept maki
ng them right through to at least 1990, a decade or two or three after n
early every other pediatrician in America.
He was there to diagnose in the early days of anorexia nervosa and now w
orries about what he refers to in its Yiddish name, "ess, kint disease,
" or "eat, child!" disease, meaning obesity.
Until the day he retired, on the last day of January, his office manage
r made sure she scheduled an otherwise-unheard-of full hour for well-ch
ild appointments and an even more unlikely full half-hour for anyone wh
o was coming in sick. He has never charged patients for calling after h
ours, something that plenty of pediatricians these days consider standa
rd practice.
`The pure stuff'
The son of a tinsmith on the West Side, Stein decided on medicine after h
is sister's boyfriend, a dentist, urged him to try dental school. He fi
gured if he was going to go to school four more years anyway, he might a
s well come out a physician. "I didn't want to work on the mouth anyway
," he said, spinning his story in between seeing patients on the last d
ay.
While interning at Cook County Hospital in the 1930s, he took a turn in t
he children's ward and never left.
"I don't get a lot of older people with their symptoms that are exagger
ated. You get the pure stuff from kids. I like that."
Once before, a couple of years ago actually, Stein retired. For one nig
ht. He had walked out of the office at the end of the alleged last day, t
hinking he was hanging up his stethoscope.
But, recounts Pat Martorano, his office manager for the last 13 years, "
he came back in the next day. With tears in his eyes. He put his arm ar
ound me and said, `Pat, I can't do it.'"
This time, though, it looks official. A letter went out to 2,800 patien
ts. His malpractice insurance expired at midnight Jan. 31.
A chocolate sheet cake, its right flank lopped off by midafternoon that l
ast day, lay exposed on a table in the office lounge, further evidence, w
ith its blue-icing "Good Luck," that this round of retirement might sti
ck. Stein, hair combed as if fresh from the barber, a dab of chocolate s
chmutz to the left of his lips, walked slow but steady from room to pat
ient room, his spine bent ever so slightly in the stoop of old age.
A cane, tucked off to the side of his desk chair, was the only clue rea
lly that he had slowed at all. But it was the slowing down, Stein said, t
hat had pushed him to thinking it was time.
"I have trouble getting around. I don't go to hospitals anymore. I don'
t see newborns unless they're sick," said the doctor, who was widowed i
n 1984 and who has two grown children, an ophthalmologist son, Robert, a
nd a daughter, Deborah Frumkin, who is a radio announcer and producer a
t WFMT-FM, the classical radio station. "Physically, you can't go on fo
rever."
Gifts and tears
So all that last day, the office was a stream of patients coming in to s
ay goodbye. Bearing boxes of candy, and cookies and nuts. And long face
s. A 13-year-old girl sent him a gift card for a Greek diner in the nei
ghborhood. A 7-year-old brought in a check for $30. Many, who had been h
is patients when they were children and whose children were now his pat
ients, came in tears.
Everyone had a story.
How he came to their houses on Friday nights and let himself in, knowin
g his Orthodox Jewish families could not open the door on the Sabbath, b
ecause he had a lab report they needed to know or a sick child he neede
d to see with his own eyes. How he recognized their voice on the phone e
ven before they said who it was. How he could always remember what stre
et you lived on when you were a kid, your mother's name and how your da
d made a living. How he opened the office on a Sunday morning if you ha
d just adopted a baby from overseas and wanted her checked right away. H
ow he always calmed a parent's worst fears.
How he'd danced at their weddings. How he'd made special house calls fo
r a toddler's upsherinish, an Orthodox Jewish ceremony when a young boy
's hair is cut for the very first time. How he'd attended bar mitzvahs, g
iven checkups before children went off to study in Israel.
"When I got the letter, my heart sank," said Lakey Silber, a mother of t
hree boys, who had rushed in after work to say goodbye. "I love him bec
ause he's everything a doctor should be--so caring, loving, nurturing, w
arm, non-alarmist. I've been with him for 22 years. Caring, did you wri
te down caring? He's such a good diagnostician. He knows what you have b
efore you walk in.
"I always told him I prayed for him when I light the candles on Friday n
ight. That he should live a long life so he could take care of all his k
ids--including my own."
|
| Living |
FEB 2006 |
|
| Misc |
22 SEP 1982 |
Place: Chicago, Cook, Illinois
- Source:
- Address Book
Page: Denise Moskovitz
Quality: Primary
Source Text: office: 6450 N California, 60659, HO5-3500
|
| Misc |
FEB 2006 |
Place: Chicago, Cook, Illinois
- Source:
- Web site
Page: Children's Memorial Hospital
Quality: Secondary
Source Text: Albert F. Stein, MD
Member, Children's Community Physicians Association
Specialty * Pediatrics (general)
Sees patients at
North Shore Pediatric Associates, SC
6374 N. Lincoln Avenue, Suite 203, Chicago, IL 60659
773.509.0023 773.509.1839 (fax)
Medical school : University of Illinois, 1935
Postgraduate training : Cook County Hospital, 1935-1941
Certifications : Board certified in Pediatrics, 1940
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