I wish to add to the tributes of Dr. Pat Clare made by friends, family, student athletes and colleagues. These words come from my heart, as the mother of one of his smallest patients.
In the late 1960s, Dr. Clare completed an internship at Shriners Hospital for Children in Minneapolis where my daughter Sarah was a patient. Sarah was born with fibular hemimelia, a congenital accident that left her leg deformed. After an initial amputation just below the knee, Sarah required periodic surgeries during her childhood to revise the tibia so that she could comfortably walk in a prosthesis. There were few doctors in Nebraska at that time who wanted to operate on young children. The Shriners hospital accepted Sarah and that is where we first met Pat. When he left Shriners, he moved to Lincoln. At last we could be at home, together, instead of enduring weeks of separation as she recovered.
Over the course of the next decade and a half, Pat cared for her with the tenderness and compassion of a caring father. For a small child, undergoing surgery in a big hospital can be extremely traumatic, and it was for Sarah, but Pat’s gentleness made all the difference. At those times when she needed it most, Pat always made her feel safe. What a blessing he was to us.
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Maggie Sievers, Lincoln