Jeff Hartzell, longtime physician, hospice-care pioneer, and former Flyers team doctor, has died at 93

Jeff Hartzell, 93, of Merion, longtime physician at Pennsylvania Hospital, hospice-care pioneer, Flyers team doctor for two decades, and adventurer, died Thursday, Oct. 13, of heart disease at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Inspired by his son’s kindhearted doctor to become a physician himself at 37, Dr. Hartzell went on to work at Pennsylvania Hospital for more then 30 years, cofound and serve as first medical director of its groundbreaking hospice-care program, and win the 1998 Jacob Ehrenzeller Award as a distinguished former resident.

He was later recruited and joined a private practice that included former Flyers physician Edward D. Viner and current Flyers medical director Gary W. Dorshimer. In a tribute, Viner said Dr. Hartzell was “a very humble man but a really great physician in the full sense of that word.”

He was also the longtime alternate physician and traveled overseas with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Former patients greeted him and his family practically everywhere, and his daughter, Jane Hartzell, credited that to his “exquisite human sensitivity and ability to key in on what ails someone, what their principal source of suffering is.”

He was a confidant of Flyers owner Ed Snider for decades, served as team doctor in the 1980s and ‘90s, and became well-known to fans and the media during the Eric Lindros era, when the team, especially Lindros, was hit hard by injuries and controversial health problems. He attended hundreds of ice hockey games, had plenty of stories from those days, and some of the Flyers, such as Lindros, kept in touch over the years.

In 1995, Lindros was recovering from a serious eye injury and eager to rejoin the team. But Dr. Hartzell was firm that more recovery time was needed. The team’s medical department, he said, had the final decision on such matters. “I think [Lindros] was maybe a little relieved for us to tell him not to play,” Dr. Hartzell told the Daily News.

Smart and discreet, he worked overseas for the CIA after college to fulfill his military obligation in the 1950s. He was a lifelong wilderness canoe-trip enthusiast who, along with his brother, Frank, and boyhood friend Bart Harrison, bought a small fishing lodge and spent countless days with family and friends over six decades at Camp Wabun and on Lake Temagami in northern Ontario, Canada.

“If there was ever a home away from home, it is Temagami for us,” said his son Andy.

Born Sept. 11, 1929, at Pennsylvania Hospital, Dwight Jeffery Hartzell grew up in Wallingford, graduated from William Penn Charter School, and earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Amherst College in 1951.

He went on a blind date with Ann Shmidheiser, knew right away she was the one, and they married in 1953 in Germany, where he was stationed for the CIA. They returned to Philadelphia in 1956, settled in Merion, and had sons Jeff Jr. and Andy and daughter Jane.

He worked in his father’s manufacturing business for a few years before his career-changing “epiphany” with his son’s doctor led him to medical school. He took premed classes at Drexel and St. Joseph’s Universities, got all A’s to show his family their sacrifice was worth it, and graduated from Penn’s school of medicine, now the Perelman School of Medicine, in 1966.

“He was such a cool person,” one of his medical school classmates said in a tribute.

Dr. Hartzell was a pithy writer who sometimes sent critiques to disagreeable politicians. He was an amateur carpenter and tinkerer, and built his own hammered dulcimer and a two-car garage at his home in Vermont.

He admired his older brother for his military service, attended nearly every Amherst reunion, was on the reunion committee at Perelman, and called himself the “luckiest man I know.”

He was a proponent of “finding your bliss,” and his daughter said: “He had no need to tout his accomplishments nor broadcast his pride in and love for his family. He was secure in who he was. He lived the terrific example of not needing to prove anything.”

In addition to his children and brother, Dr. Hartzell is survived by six grandchildren; a sister Mary Lee Young; and other relatives. His wife and son Jeff Jr. died earlier.

A celebration of his life is to be held later.

Donations in his name may be made to the Red Canoe Foundation, 96 Bay State Rd., Apt. 9, Boston, Mass. 02215.