Arthur Grayzel

Born to immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York in 1932, Arthur Irwin Grayzel came of age in a tumultuous time. He grew up the only child of David M. Grayzel, a pathologist at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital, and Sarah Grayzel, a loving matriarch of the family with a passion for the arts. He remembered the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor interrupting the baseball game to which he was listening on the radio as one of the first historical moments of his life and he maintained a life-long love of history and baseball, although love of the latter was diminished by the relocation of his beloved Dodgers to Los Angeles.

Growing up in Flatbush and around the corner from Ebbets Field, he told stories of a happy childhood attending school (P.S. 92) and playing stickball, despite the hardships of the Depression and the Second World War and having family members in the armed forces. He excelled at Erasmus Hall High School, from which he graduated in 1949, and then attended Harvard College. He received his degree in biochemistry with honors in 1953 and went on to Harvard Medical School as a member of the class of 1957. His voracious appetite for knowledge and serious, scientific approach to acquiring it did not deter him from seeking out places to hear jazz and otherwise cultivate the joie de vivre that characterized his life. He could recount the awe of a youth witnessing Jackie Robinson steal home, hearing Mabel Mercer sing, attending the original production of ‘Oklahoma’ on Broadway, and having Tom Lehrer teach him calculus. His love of art, especially live theatre and music, and endless desire to understand the world around him shaped his life outside of his vibrant career in medicine.

He was, he liked to say, “Lucky in life and lucky in love.” During the fall of his junior year in college, he met his first wife, Estherann Fink Grayzel, during her freshman year at Radcliffe College. He later spoke with pride of how he figured out how to make a lasting impression on her; at their first meeting, he responded to her statement that she too was premed by telling her, he thought that was a great idea. He was the first person to do so, and when they married in 1957, she was a medical student at Northwestern University and he was starting his internship at the University of Chicago. He was the rare man of his generation who wholeheartedly supported his wife’s career and ambition; he did not like to be bored and in their long marriage together, they traveled extensively, saw every Broadway show they deemed worth seeing, and instilled a love of learning and the necessity of reading the New York Times thoroughly every day (regardless of where you lived) in their three children, Jon, Sue, and Dave. He read voraciously, enjoyed a martini made to his exact specifications, and appreciated a fine meal and good wine, but he valued robust, informed conversation above all else.

After completing his residency in internal medicine in Boston, research at the National Institutes of Health, and a fellowship in rheumatology at Manchester Royal Infirmary in the United Kingdom, he returned to New York to begin work as a rheumatologist and researcher at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. There he cared for patients, taught medical students, trained residents and fellows and ran a research lab focused primarily on the immunology of lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, ultimately becoming a Professor of Medicine. He left Einstein to become a Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs at the Arthritis Foundation, where he worked to raise awareness and lobby Congress for greater support of research and patients with chronic disease. He followed that with a similar role at the Sjrogrens Foundation and long-standing participation on the Institutional Review Board at Einstein.

His strengths in medicine were numerous, excelling as a gifted researcher, clinician, and educator, but when Estherann became ill with ALS, he oversaw her care and ensured that she could die peacefully at home. From there his luck in love and life continued with a second act worthy of Broadway. He married Claire Lieberwitz and spent more than twenty years with a companion who shared his zest for travel, thatre, and New York City. He had a thing for smart, accomplished women and flourished in their company.

Above all other traits, Arthur was interested in ideas; travel followed only after reading a curated list of academic and cultural texts about the chosen destination. He pursued this thirst for knowledge and understanding as he roamed the world with Claire and supported the arts in New York. He had decided opinions about the world and about the art he consumed, but they were never uninformed. His worldview might be summed up by the phrase he used to explain the limited value of assumptions: “anyone who thinks they are normal hasn’t been tested enough.” He took delight in seeing the classics on stage (Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen, Chekhov), but he also loved seeing anything that was thoughtful and engaging. At 83, he saw Hamilton at the Public Theater, long before it was a Broadway sensation, and enjoyed it thoroughly. He spent his retirement fulfilling lifelong goals like visiting the Silk Road, taking classes in order to read all of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and when the global pandemic hit he seized the opportunity (finally) to read all of Dante in a class that met over Zoom. Until the end, his calendar was always full of the next play or opera or exhibit; his shelved full of the next novel or history to read; his desktop opened to the New York Times.

He is survived by his wife, Claire Lieberwitz, children Jonathan and spouse Julia Gallagher, Susan and spouse Joseph Ward, David and spouse Courtney Dickinson; and grandchildren Sarah, Rebecca, Max, Connor, Benjamin, and Noah. He was predeceased by his first wife Estherann Grayzel and his grandson Dave. The family asks that donations be made to the NYU Hematology Research Fund c/o Bruce Raphael, M.D. 240 E 38th ST, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.