This is the sixth in a series of articles intended to paint a cumulative portrait of our Jewish community through interviews with randomly selected individuals. Today, we focus on David L. Coran, M.D.
“Still waters run deep” goes the proverb about how quiet, non-flashy people often have more to them than noisy and showy types. But one may have to enter the waters in order to find out how deep they are.
Judy Becker, who grew up in Fox Point, certainly had to do that. She met David Coran when they were both medical residents — she in ophthalmology, he in orthopedics — in his native city, Boston. “I’m somewhat talkative; he’s kind of quiet,” she said. “I didn’t think much would come of it.”
Today, they are married and have three children because she eventually discovered that “there’s a lot more under the surface” of David Coran. “He’s bright, quick, has a dry sense of humor and is a lot of fun,” she said. “And he’s a better friend than I am; he keeps in touch with his friends from high school.”
She apparently isn’t the only one to feel this way about him. Dr. Brian Black, one of Coran’s partners at the Sports Medicine and Orthopedic Center and the one who invited Coran to join the group about four years ago, said that “his patients love him. When I cover for him [when he goes on vacation], they seem disappointed; they want Dr. Coran…. He loves his work and it shows in the way his patients respond to him.”
But then, orthopedic spine surgeon Coran, 38, has long been as interested in “the human aspects of medicine” as in the scientific, as he put it in a recent interview at his home. His interest in medicine almost came with his genes; his father is professor of surgery at the University of Michigan. (Though born in Boston, he grew up primarily in Ann Arbor.) But as an undergraduate at Harvard University, he did a double major in history and science.
In medicine, he became interested in orthopedic surgery because in that field a physician “can really make a difference in people’s lives,” he said. “You see an older woman with a hip fracture, or someone with bad arthritis, very limited in how they can move, and you help them become functional again…. And you don’t see a lot of terminal disease or deal with end-of-life problems.” He further became interested in pediatric orthopedics, particularly mentioning treating children with such birth defects as club feet or curved spines.
But while a surgeon, he isn’t just a “cutter,” saying that he actually operates on only about five percent of his patients. “You have to wear a lot of hats,” including those of “psychiatrist, internist, social worker,” he said. “You have to have a good handle on patients’ emotional and psychological states and their medical problems,” he added. “Not every patient can be treated the same.”
A certain amount of Jewish activism has run in his family as well. His mother was very active in her synagogue — she became its president at one point — and in B’nai B’rith Women. He himself not only attended Hebrew school and had a bar mitzvah, but as a teen attended and rose to counselor at Camp Herzl, the Zionist camp in Webster, Wis. “It was very intense [and] very spiritual,” he said of his camp experiences.
The Corans’ two oldest children — Alyson, 6, and Daniel, 5 — attend the Milwaukee Jewish Day School; and their youngest, Jacob, 2, will join them when old enough. “I like the concept of the Judaica and Hebrew all integrated,” he said. “It’s satisfying to see … all the things they are learning about Judaism.”
With a demanding job that requires 70 to 80 hours of work a week, Coran doesn’t have time for much else. He said he does play some golf and likes to ski and scuba dive, but at present he prefers to “spend pretty much all my time with my family when I’m not working.” (Judy also works part time as an ophthalmologist.)
But Coran appears to be one of those people who finds it hard to leave work behind. “David is the kind of doctor who calls the office two or three times a day when he’s on vacation to check up on how his patients are doing,” said Black. “He’s the most hard-working doctor I’ve ever met since my father.”
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