Remembering Doc Oliver, who put the ‘care’ in primary care physician

You’re going to be okay.

Coming from Doc Oliver, the words were reassuring. In a Morristown practice spanning four decades, he made a lot of patients feel better.

“He was always there to provide a listening ear, lift my spirits and provide excellent care,” recounted one of them, Karen Shippey, a nurse.

Mark Allen Oliver died Monday at his Randolph home, surrounded by loved ones, from a rare neurodegenerative disease. He was 75.

Patients calling his Elm Street office over the last few weeks were told Dr. Oliver was on “personal leave,” possibly until July, and were directed to try urgent care facilities in the meantime.

A solo practitioner in an era of multi-physician practices, Oliver was a throwback. His father ran a practice from his Brooklyn apartment and never ventured anywhere without his doctor bag, according to the family.

Doc Oliver inherited that zeal. He gave his cell phone number to patients. And returned their calls. I got a callback one night at 9:30.

“He viewed medicine as a calling, and not just as a business,” said Oliver’s son, Aaron “A.J.” Oliver of Morristown.

If that meant fielding patients’ calls at the cinema, or taking work home after a long day at the office, so be it. Some nights, the doctor would fall asleep at the kitchen table, reviewing patients’ cases.

“I would wake him up,” A.J. said.

An expert on blood clots, Oliver co-founded a vascular lab at Morristown Medical Center. He gave lectures about deep vein thrombosis, led an Eliquis drug trial, and contributed to textbooks, according to his obituary.

But bedside manner mattered most. Peppy banter and corny jokes were essential tools in his kit.

(“Don’t worry, I studied with Dr. Ben Dover,” he liked to say, in an accent worthy of Ebbets Field, before probing one’s prostate)

It might take months to crack his crowded calendar for a checkup. Once you were in, Doc Oliver wasted no time getting reacquainted. He seemed interested; patients were more than a collection of symptoms.

“I always looked forward to my appointments with him. (Who looks forward to doctor appointments?) He was so easy to talk to, and he genuinely cared about you,” Michael Leahey wrote on a memorial page.

Leahey became a fan four decades ago, when he started taking his mom to Dr. Oliver. She regarded Oliver as a friend. Leahey liked the jokes, and watching Oliver struggle — or pretend to struggle–with a computer that never seemed to do what he wanted, necessitating help from his nurses.

“They don’t make doctors like him anymore,” Leahey said.

Patients learned about Oliver, too, during office visits. They heard about his Catskills gigs on clarinet and saxophone, from younger days, and more recently, about jazzing it up with doctor pals in the A.O.K Trio. And of course, there was the story of his surprise hole-in-one, on a cloudy day when everyone lost sight of the ball.

Brenda Bankhead, a patient for 30 years, loved those hearing those tales.

“Doc was not only my physician, but I considered him to be my friend,” she said in a posting.

A GIG AT THE WORLD’S FAIR

Raised in Brooklyn by his doctor dad and art teacher mom, Mark Oliver graduated from Poly Prep Country Day School and earned a math degree at the University of Vermont.

(What was a city kid doing in the Green Mountain State? “Dad always said his guidance counselor wasn’t very good,” A.J. said.)

At Vermont, Oliver was a brother of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. As a clarinetist with the marching band, he performed at the New York World’s Fair.

Oliver got his medical degree at his father’s alma mater, Chicago Medical School. He paused a residency at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York for a military stint, running a one-bed intensive care unit and serving as an allergist at Mountain Home Air Force Base, A.J. said.

He returned to St. Vincent’s to become chief resident, then opened his private practice in Morristown.

Dana Fisher worked five years for Doc Oliver.

“He was the best boss I ever had,” a wonderful doctor and person, she posted on a  tribute page. “He became like family to me.”

Testimonials from longtime patients described Oliver in similar terms.

Ann Kelsey credited her good health and healthy lifestyle to advice gleaned from Dr. Oliver over 40 years.

He “always took the time to listen to me and make my medical concerns a collaborative, caring process, with plenty of puns and jokes thrown in for good measure and to lighten the mood,” wrote Kelsey, noting she was two weeks older than Oliver. “He never let me forget that.”

Away from the office, Oliver was an avid dancer. He enjoyed skiing, tennis, baseball, theater and photography, and coached youth baseball and soccer. He had intended to retire one day and study world history, said A.J., a chaplain in the Army National Guard who said he strives to emulate his father’s bedside manner.

Oliver was married twice and had four children. A.J. said his dad’s insistence on fielding patients’ calls at all hours could be frustrating. But there was a flip side. The doctor also insisted on answering calls from his kids–even in the exam room.

It’s not an emergency, his staff would protest, recounted A.J. His father held firm.

“No, this is family,” Doc Oliver would say, taking the calls.

He is survived by his wife, Elise Oliver of Randolph, and four children: Twins Mia and A.J. of Morristown; David, of Washington D.C.; and Jenny Oliver, of New York. He also leaves behind a brother, Jon Oliver, of Ventura, Calif., and many brothers and sisters-in-law, nephews, nieces, cousins and friends.

He was predeceased by his parents, Dr. William and Selma Oliver, as well as aunt Frances Rothman and his beloved nanny, Effie Boone.

A Funeral Service is scheduled for Friday, May 20, 2022, at 10 am at Temple B’Nai Or, 60 Overlook Road, Morristown. (Masks are required inside the Temple while attending Funeral Service.) Interment will follow at Beth Israel Cemetery, Cedar Knolls, New Jersey.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Foundation, Inc., Prion Alliance and/or Temple B’Nai Or.

Disclosure: Dr. Oliver was my primary care physician. He took very good care of me. My condolences to his family, and to his extended family–his legion of patients.