Birth Aug. 9, 1954
Camden, NJ
Death Nov. 11, 2024
Northfield, VT
Details of service
Services will be arranged in the spring “when the lupines are up”.
Mark R. Depman, M.D. age 70 of Northfield, Vermont and New Haven, Connecticut, an emergency medicine physician and studio artist, died on November 11, 2024, over 2 years after his diagnosis with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He was the husband of Kimberley Adams, M.D. and father of Charlie. He loved them dearly. He leaves his mother, Natalie; brother, Albert and his wife Barbara; brother John and his wife Betsy; sister Ceci and her husband Rick Bennett; nieces Hillary, Emily, Cecilia, Jeanne, and nephews, AJ, Ethan, and Robert. He was predeceased by his father, Albert, a civil engineer.
Mark attended Camden Catholic High School, but transferred to the Mercersburg Academy, nestled in the mountains of Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley, for the last two years as a “scholarship boy”. He treasured that time, and fellow students and faculty families became lifelong friends. He received a B.A. from Harvard College where he was captain of the swim team; he was awarded a Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship for post graduate study at Oxford University; and received his M.D. from Weill Cornell Medical College where he graduated as a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha honor society. He completed his internship and residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital.
Mark and Kim were married for almost 50 years. They met during freshman year of college. After medical school and training in New York City, they settled in Guilford, Connecticut where they lived and raised Charlie on the beautiful town Green. They made great enduring friendships in those years. Mark was an ER physician at St. Raphael’s Hospital in New Haven, and a Clinical Instructor at Yale’s School of Medicine. They later moved to Northfield, Vermont where Mark started working at Central Vermont Medical Center in 2007. Mark served as an Attending Physician in the Emergency Department, Medical Director for 7 years, Regional Physician Leader in the UVM Health Network, and a Trustee of CVMC.
Mark, Kim, and Charlie loved the land that they lived on in Vermont. Whether hiking, XC skiing, maintaining trails, foraging, nudging perennials along in gardens and fields, reforesting, or just observing nature and the vistas through the seasons, he found deep satisfaction in stewardship of the land.
Mark’s life was ever entwined in the practices of medicine and studio art.
He loved Emergency Medicine for the challenges of acute care, the broad scope of patients and problems, and the collaboration and teamwork with all staff. Mark knew that clinical problem solving required careful listening and quoted Osler to medical students and residents: “Listen to your patient: [they are] telling you the diagnosis”. But he also believed that a physician must listen to the community for diagnoses too. In his last 10 years of medical practice, he and his colleagues in the ER, in primary care, and hospital administration addressed the crises of alcohol and drug misuse and addiction head on. They worked with committed community partners to start the Central Vermont Prevention Coalition, implemented clinical pathways and local innovations that bridged the hospital and the community. Mark died grateful for those colleagues and friends who will continue this work.
Mark made art since he was a boy, copying Audubon birds in watercolor and learning oils under the watchful eye of an emigree Viennese painter in his New Jersey hometown. At Mercersburg he recalled the sense of liberation in the school’s art studio, making technical experiments with “decidedly mixed results!”. Mark maintained a studio for painting in New York City then New Haven. His experiments in digital art and photography, as those technologies evolved, started in the 1980’s and led to exhibitions in New York with the Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery and then the Nancy Hoffman Gallery.
In 2003 he wanted to get his “hands back in the work”, so he began taking pottery lessons and helping the apprentices at the Guilford Art Center. Soon he was making pottery in his own studio, which he continued doing until the time of his death.
Mark received excellent care during his years with cancer, at Central Vermont Medical Center, UVM, and Dartmouth-Hitchcock. His values and goals were respected and amplified by the compassion of Dr. David Ospina and the team at the CVMC’s Cancer Center, Dr. Jonna Goulding in Palliative Care, and Dr. Matthew Sullivan at his primary care home, Green Mountain Family Practice in Northfield. The Central Vermont Home Health and Hospice team, led by Cheyanne and Amanda, was fantastic.
Mark’s professional “home”, the ER at CVMC, was always a safe harbor with deep levels of excellence, caring, and community focus. His colleagues supported him and his family through these last years, especially during autumn cleanup time on the land, gardens, and trails.
Mark wanted family and friends to consider planting a tree in his memory. Particularly, an oak.
Memorial contributions in Mark’s name can be made to CVMC Emergency Department at CVMC at https://www.cvmc.org/about-cvmc/donate or to the Guilford (CT) Art Center where Mark learned to make pottery: https://guilfordartcenter.org/support/
Services will be arranged in the spring “when the lupines are up”.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Mark R. Depman, M.D..