BANGOR, Maine — A pioneering pediatrician and geneticist in Maine died Wednesday after working most of his life to improve health care for children.
Paul LaMarche, former chief clinical officer at Eastern Maine Medical Center, died at Citrus Memorial Hospital in Inverness, Florida, after suffering chronic heart problems and being diagnosed with lung cancer, according to daughter Pat LaMarche.
A native of Boston, the father of five was 85.
Pat LaMarche said her father told her last week the best way for her to carry on his legacy was to continue his work to attract more pediatricians to serve the people of Maine.
“He said, ‘You’re going to have to pay their student loans,’ so he’s right,” said LaMarche, who lives in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. “We’re going to have to make an incentive for people to try to live in Maine who weren’t educated here.”
A 2006 gubernatorial candidate for the Maine Green Independent Party and 2004 vice presidential candidate for the Green Party, LaMarche said she plans to speak with state lawmakers about her father’s idea.
After moving his family from Rhode Island to the Bangor area in the 1970s, Paul LaMarche was instrumental in the development of robust pediatric care programs at EMMC as well as the recruitment of pediatric specialists to the area, according to Dr. Larry Beauregard, who worked closely with LaMarche for 35 years.
After serving as a hospital corpsman in the U.S. Navy and completing his education at Boston College and the Boston University School of Medicine, LaMarche founded a genetics program at the Rhode Island Hospital-Brown School of Medicine.
He went on to serve 21 years at EMMC, including 10 as chief of pediatrics and genetics and 11 as chief clinical officer.
Beauregard said LaMarche was a pioneer in the field of genetics, working in the ’60s and ’70s to develop tests to detect birth defects and other genetic conditions in newborns and eventually to develop neonatal tests.
He was instrumental in establishing the hospital’s genetics laboratory and its child development center to treat conditions such as cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy and autism, Beauregard said.
“He loved the people of Maine,” Pat LaMarche said. “He was afraid that if there wasn’t a world-class pediatric unit in Bangor that some little mommy would have to drive her sick kid to Portland from Fort Kent, and those were the things that motivated him.”
Eventually, Beauregard said, they realized their genetics work was useful in the detection and treatment of certain types of cancer and expanded their work to adult health care.
After his retirement from EMMC in 1995, LaMarche went on to serve as director of the Husson Science Research Institute.
In retirement, he spent his winters in Florida and split time in Maine between homes in Eddington and Grand Lake Stream. Funeral arrangements are being handled by Brookings-Smith Funeral Home in Bangor.
Follow Evan Belanger on Twitter at @evanbelanger.