Dr.
Leon E. Kassel, a retired internal medicine physician who set up and ran the
outpatient program at Sinai Hospital, died Dec. 2, 2014 of congestive heart failure.
He was 92.
Leon Kassel was born in Baltimore to Nathan and Esther Eileen
Kassel, who operated a dry-goods store in Canton. He graduated from City
College at 16 and was admitted to what was then the State Teachers College at
Towson.
His youngest son, Daniel Kassel of Severna Park, said his father
would take the streetcar to the city line, then walk the rest of the way to
save the extra nickel in fare it cost to cross into Baltimore County.
Daniel Kassel said his father, feeling out of place at a school
where most of the students were older, dropped out and went to work for the
Army as a civilian for about six months before enlisting in the service early
in World War II.
After scoring well on an aptitude test, Dr. Kassel was sent to
what was then Pennsylvania State College, now Pennsylvania State University, to
study engineering. After a subsequent test, the Army gave him the choice of
working on a secret research project or attending medical school.
Dr. Kassel chose to study medicine at the University of Virginia
and later learned the assignment he turned down was the Manhattan Project,
which developed the atomic bomb. His son said Dr. Kassel was relieved he had
not been involved.
After earning his medical degree in 1949, Dr. Kassel took his
residency at Sinai Hospital but was recalled into the military in 1952. He was
assigned to the Air Force in Alaska, where he spent about a year in the
Aleutians before his young family joined him in Anchorage.
Dr. Kassel left the Air Force in 1954 and returned to Baltimore,
where he set up a private practice and renewed his association with Sinai. He
received his certification in internal medicine in 1957.
In 1976, Dr.
Boris Kerzner joined him in his practice. Dr. Kerzner said Dr. Kassel helped
establish and led the ambulatory care training program, caring for people on an
outpatient basis, at Sinai. "He was certainly very well respected by his
peers as well as his patients," Dr. Kerzner said. "He made a major
contribution to that program at Sinai.”
Dr. Kassel would go on to join the staff at Sinai, where he held
such positions as associate chief of the medical department and director of the
ambulatory medicine program.
By 1992, Dr. Kassel was director of Sinai's general medicine
division, a capacity in which he treated older refugees from Russia who had
settled in Baltimore. In a 1992 article in The Baltimore Sun, he described the
challenges in treating patients who were often depressed as they tried to adapt
to a new culture. Dr. Kassel told The Sun he had learned not to suggest
psychiatric help.
While he was assuming the presidency of Med-Chi, he met his third
wife, the former Ann Wintriss, who survives him. She was the editor of
Med-Chi's journal, and they met while she was writing a profile of him, Daniel
Kassel said. They married in 1991.
For a time, Dr. Kassel served as acting chief of medicine at
Sinai, said Lynn Wintriss, a stepdaughter who lives in Baltimore. He retired in
the late 1990s, according to family members.
According to that article, Dr. Kassel also served as an assistant
professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and as an instructor
at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
Known for his diligent care for his patients, Dr. Kassel was a
resident of the Roland Park Place retirement community and had previously lived
in North Baltimore and Hunt Valley. In 1987, he served as president of MedChi,
The Maryland State Medical Society.
"He was extremely bright and gracious and courteous and
courtly," said Gil Sandler, a neighbor at Roland Park Place and a friend
since high school. "I never saw him in a bad mood."
"He just had an excellent bedside manner. His patients always
came first," his son said. Whenever they went out to local restaurants, he
said, former patients would come to the table and thank Dr. Kassel.
His son described Dr. Kassel as "very progressive,"
adding that his father established a pro bono clinic in East Baltimore and quit
the American Medical Association over its opposition to Medicare.
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