J. PAUL CURRY, MD

The extraordinary life of J. Paul Curry, MD, came to a close on Sunday, September 7th, after one final display of excellence—defying physical science with flashes of impish wit and spontaneous poetry, even in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

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Paul lived as if excellence were a dare. Raised in South Florida, his brilliance, mischief, and enduring fear of water moccasins were evident early on. A born defier of pretense, he enlisted his two younger sisters in outrageous pranks designed to sabotage his parents’ cocktail parties. He spent much of his childhood in a wary dance with his Irish father, mischief almost always followed by escape. One morning, after absentmindedly flooding the house with a garden hose, he saw his father storming toward him and realized his mistake. In a flash of panic and instinct—and to his own horror—he turned the spray on him. For a few surreal seconds they locked eyes through the torrent, his father sputtering, Paul frozen in terror, until he dropped the hose and bolted into the Everglades.

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Not all his flights to the woods were born of defiance. For all his antics, there was a gentleness at his core. When Paul was eight, his mother returned home from a brief trip to the UK, newly inspired by British aristocracy and insisting he wear a tartan kilt to school. Paul put it on without complaint. He then walked down the road toward the school yard, just far enough to satisfy her glance, before veering into the trees. For an eight-year-old boy, attending school in a kilt was a death sentence. But disappointing his mother was unthinkable. So he waited out the entire school day among the trees, kilt and all, and came home at the usual hour.

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Animals trusted him, though he never trusted snakes. He was permitted to keep pet rats in the garage and turned the area into a laboratory, soon revealing his scientific genius. With guidance from a surgeon neighbor, he anesthetized and performed thyroidectomies on his pets. He then presented the chubby, thriving results for a school science project like nothing anyone had ever seen.

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At the University of Florida College of Medicine, Paul studied under Dr. Robert Cade, assisting in early research on what would become Gatorade. Already devoted to fitness, he served as both researcher and subject, running laps in the Florida heat to test endurance and electrolytes. He remained loyal to the lemon-lime drink for life, with the trunk of his Mustang stocked like a survival cache.

Paul entered emergency medicine when the field was still in its infancy. At St. Mary’s Medical Center in downtown Long Beach during the 1970s, he practiced in an era when ERs were staffed by whoever was available and protocols were being invented on the fly. By becoming board certified in 1981, within two years of the first certification exam ever offered, he placed himself among the first generation of physicians to give the specialty legitimacy. He wasn’t just practicing emergency medicine. He was helping it exist.

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Never one to stop at the frontier, Paul transitioned into anesthesiology and was elected Chief Resident at UCLA before joining the faculty as a clinical professor, teaching throughout his anesthesiology career. He practiced at Hoag Memorial Hospital for 24 years, where he helped found the Newport Harbor Anesthesiology Consultant Group, served as Chair of the Anesthesiology Department, and became the only anesthesiologist ever elected Chief of Staff. He dedicated his career to patient safety, developing Hoag’s pre-op screening procedures, still in use today, and advancing the standardized use of pulse oximetry nationwide, saving countless lives. Yet his practice of medicine was always personal. Each night he came home in scrubs and spent an hour or more on the kitchen landline, calling every patient scheduled for surgery the next day and guiding them with warmth, humor, and genuine care.

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His discipline was legendary, if unconventional. He believed a brutal workout and a good book could cure most ailments. At the local 24-Hour Fitness he became a mascot of sorts, in short shorts and a headband, ignoring every rule of moderation and form. He never missed a day. He competed in the open-ocean kayak race from Marina del Rey to Catalina Island, winning first place more than once. When his daughters were grounded, he ran “Fire Mountain” with them, instilling stamina and grit and leaving them forever unsure of the real name of that road.

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At home, he pursued curiosity and creativity with equal devotion. After the death of his mother Cassie, he remastered her apple pie recipe with the precision of a chemist, keeping the dough chilled and handling it like glass to preserve its bonds. The resulting crust was so perfectly flaky that it won first prize at the Orange County Fair several years running.

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He was also a masterful musician who played both flute and piano. He filled the house with music, undeterred as his young daughters climbed over and around him, bowls of milk and cereal teetering above the piano strings, his melodies keeping time with the relentless squeak of a spring-loaded rocking horse.

Even at the hospital his chief role was Dad. While his anesthesiology colleagues tricked out their carts with high-end sound systems, Paul’s machine bore one of his daughter’s Fisher-Price cassette players, affixed to the cart with white cloth tape, a top drawer containing an eclectic stash of cassettes that the OR staff would be stuck with for the day. Nurses and techs would grin, “You got stuck with Curry’s machine today,” and the room brightened even in his absence.

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Paul was also a little bit psychic, at least about his children. He saved each of their lives more than once, seemed to know their plans before they did, and excelled at busting up parties and teenage mischief. Family pets always favored him. His daughters feared and adored him in equal measure.

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And he was in love. When he first met Jeanne at a Halloween party in 1976, he was dressed as Jesus and she wore a hula skirt. Their chemistry was electric and endured for nearly fifty years, much to the horror of their daughters who grew up in a house without locking doors. He serenaded Jeanne at their wedding and in crowded restaurants on birthdays. Even in the later stages of Alzheimer’s, while flipping through a photo album with his daughter, Paul stopped short at a photo of Jeanne on their wedding day. “Wait, wait,” he said, motioning to turn back to the image. When told that he had in fact married the blonde in the photo, he exclaimed with boyish astonishment, “Are you kidding me?!”

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J. Paul Curry’s life was a singular mix of rigor and irreverence, brilliance and absurdity, discipline and delight. He is survived by his sisters Jaye and Mahala; his wife, Jeanne; his daughters, Lisa, Shannon, Erin, Briana, and Megan; sons-in-law, Ferdinand and Tyron; nieces Elizabeth and Cassie; nephews James and Michael Paul; grandchildren, Charles, Catherine, and John Paul; and great-grandchildren, Jude and Chase. He leaves brilliant colleagues, lifelong friends, and countless patients who were privileged to benefit from his exceptional care. His legacy lives on in safer hospitals, in homes filled with music and chaos, in the motivation to push through pain, and in the voices of daughters taught to live with curiosity and courage.