MONTEREY — Dr. Jerry Rubin, a cancer and blood specialist who cared for thousands of cancer and AIDS/HIV patients in the Monterey Bay area during his 44 years in practice, died last week following a yearlong battle with acute myeloid leukemia.
Dr. Rubin, 74, is being remembered by friends and colleagues not only for his tireless work in caring for patients, but also for helping to establish the area’s first hospice and being instrumental in the first clinic for AIDS/HIV patients in Monterey County, Outpatient Immunology Services, now part of Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula.
“Sometimes I thought that he and I were the only doctors who cared for and about the homeless, the mentally ill, the addicted, and the HIV-infected,” wrote Dr. Geraldine Taplin, an infectious disease specialist who founded OPIS and hired Dr. Rubin as the
clinic’s first physician, in an email. “I never saw him turn away a patient, and never heard him bad-mouth one.”
Steve Packer, president/CEO of Community Hospital and Montage Health, issued this statement Friday: “The entire Community Hospital family mourns the loss of Dr. Jerry Rubin, a truly extraordinary physician. Over the course of more than four decades, tens of thousands of patients in our community benefited from Jerry’s remarkable oncology expertise, his profound empathy, and his unwavering dedication.
“Seeing a critical unmet need, Dr. Rubin had a vision to create Monterey County’s first hospice and his legacy lives on through the Hospice of the Central Coast. We are grateful and fortunate to have had Dr. Rubin as a respected and beloved colleague on our medical staff. He will be missed.”
Dr. Rubin worked almost up until the end of his life, said his wife, Suellen Rubin. He continued to investigate new treatments and protocols at Pacific Cancer Care of Monterey, where he was on staff, although he could not see patients during this time due to his treatment for leukemia.
“Even three days before the end, he was still doing research,” said Suellen Rubin, a psychologist. The Rubins were married for 52 years, and were high school sweethearts.
Born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1944, Rubin was the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants who met and married after coming to the United States and eventually settled in Brooklyn, New York. His father, also a doctor, saw patients in a downstairs home office while the family lived upstairs.
He went on to attend Cornell University and then Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, graduating in 1968. After two years of internal medicine at Johns Hopkins, he was selected for fellowships at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston in the study of blood diseases (hematology) as well as cancer (oncology).
During the Vietnam War era, he served as an Army doctor at Fort Knox, Kentucky, with the rank of major. There, he also practiced nuclear medicine and assisted in surgeries: “He was interested in everything,” said Suellen Rubin.
The Rubins and their daughters, Nancy and Emily, moved to the Monterey Peninsula in 1974, where Dr. Rubin went into private practice as the first board-certified hematologist-oncologist for the area. He and registered nurse Becky Allen would go on to organize support groups for cancer patients, which evolved into the Cancer Recovery Project.
Out of this grew Hospice of the Monterey Peninsula, now Hospice of the Central Coast, which Suellen Rubin says may have been the first stand-alone hospice in the United States. In 1979, Dr. Rubin, with Ron Allen, Jean Moton and Vince Bramlett, purchased and renovated a home in Carmel Valley for this purpose.
Dr. Rubin helped develop state regulations for hospice care with Assemblyman Sam Farr, and several years later traveled with Rep. Leon Panetta to speak before Congress to introduce hospice Medicare legislation. The bipartisan bill passed in 1982.
He also found time, through the years, to be a softball coach for his daughters, to fundraise for Congregation Beth Israel in Carmel Valley and to support and enjoy a variety of music organizations in the county, including the Monterey Jazz Festival, Carmel Bach Festival and Monterey Symphony. A sports enthusiast, he continued to root for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees as well as the Golden State Warriors.
His daughters have gone on to their own successful careers in medical fields. Emily Rubin is a well-known speech pathologist who specializes in helping autistic patients and Dr. Nancy Rubin, a hematologist-oncologist, worked with her father at Pacific Cancer Care.
Nancy Rubin remembers her father as a role model and colleague. “He gave all his patients the same amount of respect and compassion, no matter who they were,” she said. “He was also a wealth of knowledge for difficult cases.”
Dr. Rubin was able to see miraculous changes in cancer treatment during more than 40 years in practice and he himself underwent a newly approved treatment for leukemia. For a time, he appeared to be in remission, said Suellen Rubin. He had hopes of once more seeing patients, as he had done for so many years.
“In the end, the disease overwhelmed him, and he made an active decision to die,” she said.
The family plans to have a celebration of life in December. Contributions in Dr. Rubin’s memory may be made to Hospice of the Central Coast, 40 Ryan Ct., Suite 200, Monterey 93940.
