Goodbye Melvin Shoul. Thank you for my life

Shoul, Dr. Melvin I., age 91, of Newton on Monday, September 30, 2013.  For 64 years, he was the beloved husband of Rohna (Isaacson).  Loving father of Mark Shoul and his wife Ruth Suyenaga, Paul Shoul, and the late David Shoul. Cherished grandfather of Kenji Shoul and Maile Shoul and her husband Sean Nolan, and dear great-grandfather of Margaret Shoul Nolan. Dear brother of Charlotte Backman and her husband Irving and the late Bernice Shoul.

Born in 1922, he attended Newburyport High School, Phillips Academy Andover, Harvard University in 1943 and Tufts Medical School in 1947. He did his internship at Boston City Hospital. He served in World War II in 1943 in the Chemical Warfare Batallion and in the Korean War in the US Army Medical Corps as a MASH surgeon from 1952-54. He co-authored a number of surgical articles and developed the Dermatome Razor for Minor Skin Grafts; a film about the invention is in the American College of Surgical Film Library. He was a beloved general surgeon to generations of Boston families at the Faulkner Hospital, Beth Israel Hospital, St. Elizabeth Hospital and retired in 1994. He researched the life of Jacob Perkins, who in 1808 invented the first steel plate printing of paper currency. Dr. Shoul was instrumental in the preservation of the first “mint” when the Historical Society of Old Newbury acquired the Perkins Printing and Engraving Plant in 2008.

Services will be private.  Memorial observance will be at his home on Sunday, October 6, 4-8pm and Monday, October 7, 1-4pm and 6-8pm.

In lieu of flowers, remembrances may be made to the Historical Society of Old Newbury, 98 High Street, Newburyport MA 01950 or to the Hebrew Rehabilitation Hospice Program, 1200 Center Street, Boston, MA 02131.