George C. Martin, M.D.
(1939 - 1988)

Dr. Martin was born in Jackson, Michigan on September 4, 1939. He was a student of both undergrduate and graduate schools, and received a MD degree in 1964. After completing his intership at St Luke's Hospital in San Francisco, 1964-1965, Dr. Martin received dermatological training at Letterman Army Medical Center in 1969 -1972. He practiced as a member of the Permanente Medical Group Hayward, California, and taught at University of California San Francisco as Assistant Clinical Professor.
 

Ms. Carolin Selbecky sent a photo of Dr. Martin taken in Switzerland along with her memories of him.

George, as a physician, was wonderful.  His patients adored him.  He found the human element in every patient that he saw no matter how rich or poor or educated.  He always knew that every person had a story and he appreciated that in his patients.  He often ran way behind seeing people but they all waited to see him and even on the short appointments he would still be in there talking a half hour later talking about their ex-husbands, their kids or their grandkids, and he genuinely loved the human part of medicine.  The other thing is that he was never afraid to out on a therapeutic limb with patients trying his best to get them better; however, sometimes his therapeutic limb led to a little embarrassment for himself.  For example, the time he took a trip to Mexico and tried psoralins for suntan and had to be airlifted back to UC with a horrible total body bullae and which he was quite embarrassed about.  When he became sick, his patients so much that on at least two occasions, when he was in the room for such a long time, I would go to check to see how he was coming and the patient would be sitting on the exam table reading a book, and George would be at his desk sleeping and the patient would motion to me to “shhhhh” that he needed his rest and that he was not feeling well.  So they were very dedicated to him and to this day, which has been over ten years ago since he passed away, patients can still cry when they talk about George.

As a teacher, I think he was excellent.  He didn’t take himself so seriously and he was a great diagnostician.  Our entire department, the medical assistants, the RN’s, he trained and we had the longest residency.  He never made you feel foolish and were all taught in every interaction with the patient to think on the basis of the differential diagnosis, whether it was the telephone, triage, or in person screening.  Consequently, we became all very expertise in dermatology and, as you know, I ended up working as a nurse practitioner in dermatology for many years because of his teaching.  He was very, very patient and never made anyone feel stupid and was an excellent teacher in that way.  He never held himself above the patients or the nurses that he worked with. 

And as a friend, there was none better.  I absolutely loved him to death; we were very close.  With all of his friends, however, he wanted their lives to be better and always wanted you to be surrounded by the nicest things and experience the nicest things.  And he changed my life tremendously.  He was very generous.  He could be annoying at times like when he would always run late and that sort of thing, but he wanted the people that he knew that their lives to be better and it didn’t matter who you were if he took a liking to you.  He was really a kind man; he had an excellent sense of humor.  He was quite artistic and had told me once that if not for medicine, he would have liked to have been a set designer for Broadway.  He just was a very complex, but very sweet man and, of course, I miss him terribly.