Robert Edward Crozier MD

Dr. Robert Edward Crozier, 94, of Boston, MA, died peacefully Saturday morning, September 2, 2017, at the Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington, MA. Dr. Crozier worked as a gastroenterologist at Lahey for 39 years from 1954 to 1993.

He was born in Portland, Maine on March 9,1923, the third of five children of Joseph Crozier, an engineer with the Maine Central Railroad, and Harriet, an elementary school teacher in the Portland public school system.

Dr. Crozier was a graduate of Bowdoin College and Georgetown University School of Medicine.

On January 15, 1959, Dr. Crozier married Mary Clayton, a feature writer with the Boston Herald-American and a media consultant. Mary Clayton Crozier survives her husband along with their two children, Matthew Crozier and Julia Crozier.

Dr. Crozier was a man of many talents. He also was determined, accomplished, kind, gentle, and caring.

He loved music, enjoyed painting, was a fine carpenter (having acquired these skills from his father), and he was steeped enough in the poetry of his hometown’s hero, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, to be able to recite stanza upon stanza of My Lost Youth, which celebrates the city of Portland and includes the famous line: ‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will and the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'

While at the Lahey Hospital and Medical Center (known as the Lahey Clinic before moving to Burlington), Dr. Crozier published several articles on diseases of the esophagus, and he founded Lahey’s Esophageal Motility Laboratory.

In addition to his gifts as a medical caregiver, Dr. Crozier also proved a stellar fundraiser for Lahey, serving as a founding member of the hospital’s Alumni Association and as its Executive Director from 1968 until 1988.

In 1988, a grateful patient of Doctor Crozier established the Robert E. Crozier Gastroenterology Endowment Fund to honor Dr. Crozier for his medical expertise and his devotion to his patients. The fund supports a yearly lecture in Gastroenterology that brings together leaders in the field who are advancing cutting edge new treatment protocols.

Dr. Crozier was a member of the American Medical Association and the Mass Medical Society as well as a fellow at the American College of Gastroenterology and a member of the Endoscopic Society of North America.

He also was an exceptional athlete and, at over 6 feet 2 inches tall, he played basketball and baseball for both Portland High School and Bowdoin College in Maine. The Boston Red Sox expressed interest in Dr. Crozier as a pitcher even while he was in high school.

World War II intervened, however, and Dr. Crozier interrupted his studies at Bowdon to join the Navy where he served as a deck officer on a U.S. Tank Landing Ship in the Pacific. He returned to Bowdoin to graduate, and then earned his medical degree at the Georgetown University School of Medicine.

When Dr. Crozier completed his medical residency, the Arctic explorer, Admiral Donald MacMillan invited Dr. Crozier to serve as Ship’s Doctor aboard the Schooner Bowdoin on one of its exploratory voyages north of the Arctic Circle. Dr. Crozier opted instead to serve as Ship’s Doctor aboard the S.S. United States, flagship of the United States Lines, and he did so for several trans-Atlantic crossings aboard the fastest liner of all time.

Dr. Crozier’s love of the sea sprang from growing up in Portland, the port city to which he returned from his adopted home in Boston throughout his lifetime. For a number of years, he captained a Bahamian cutter named Madeira on Maine coastal cruises with his extended family.

Later in life, Dr. Crozier took up running as a fitness regime that led him to race annually in the Boston Marathon in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

For over 50 years, he was a member of the University Club in Boston where he excelled at swimming and squash. He cherished his early morning exertions there and the breakfasts that followed with his friends in the Early Birds Club.

When not in Boston, Dr. Crozier could be found at his family’s seaside cottage in Cape Neddick or with members of the extended Crozier family in the Portland, Maine area. An avid golfer late in life, Dr. Crozier was a founding member of The Woodlands Club in Falmouth, Maine, and he played golf widely in the United States, Scotland and Spain with friends and relatives.

Dr. Crozier was pre-deceased by his older siblings, twins Margaret and Joseph his younger sister, Katherine, and a younger brother, Philip. Eleven nieces and nephews survive him: Greg, Beth, Colleen, Robert and Joseph Crozier; Kathy, David and Ann Crosson; Philip, Patrick and Deborah Marshall.

In lieu of flowers, gifts may be made to Lahey Hospital & Medical Center in memory of Dr. Robert E. Crozier. Gifts will support research, education and patient care. Please send your gift to: Philanthropy Office, Lahey Hospital & Medical Center, 41 Mall Road, Burlington, MA 01805. You also may donate at Giving.LaheyHealth.org/Donate.

His funeral mass will be celebrated on Saturday, September 9, 2017 at 11am at Saint Cecilia Church, 18 Belvidere St, Boston, immediately followed by a reception at the Back Bay Hilton.