Dr. Bernard Schaffer, World War II veteran, dies at 102

Dr. Bernard Schaffer, a product of the Great Depression and a veteran of the China-Burma-India theater of World War II, often expressed his view of life and the world simply: "The world keeps spinning."

Schaffer, who practiced general medicine in Rogers Park for nearly 40 years, had a genuine interest in people, according to his son David.

"He would always ask everyone he encountered, simply and genuinely, 'How are you today?'" his son said.

Schaffer, 102, was on staff at two long-closed Chicago hospitals, Edgewater and Bethesda, before retiring about 1984. He died May 21 in Evanston Hospital, according to his son. He and his late wife, Beverly, who died in 2014, were longtime residents of Lincolnwood.

Schaffer grew up on the West Side of Chicago, the son of Russian immigrants. After graduating from what was then Crane Tech High School, he went on to the University of Illinois at Chicago, earning an undergraduate degree and going on to medical school on a scholarship, his son said.

With the Depression in full swing, Schaffer first put his medical skills to work as a camp doctor in the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of the first of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs, his son said.

Over the life of the CCC, millions of otherwise unemployed young men worked in camps, planting trees, building roads, and working on and in state and national parks. According to his family, Schaffer was a camp doctor in a reforestation camp in Michigan.

He went from there into World War II as a captain in the Army Medical Corps, serving in the China, Burma and India theater of operations, his son said. Army history describes the work as supporting Army Air Forces and a relatively small number of U.S. ground troops. Doctors such as Schaffer trained and provided medical support for Chinese divisions and treated wounded Chinese soldiers battling Japanese troops in the area.

The region was well-known for operations by the Allies to re-supply Chinese areas cut off by the Japanese. Those operations included supply flights over the Burma "Hump" and construction of the Ledo Road.

He was an army field surgeon under Gen. Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell in the front battle lines, his son said, working in mobile army surgical hospitals.

"He worked on the Chinese soldiers," according to his son. "He knew how to say 'stomach ache' in Chinese."

Schaffer returned to Chicago soon after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and went into private practice from an office on Western Avenue in Rogers Park. In those days, general practitioners did everything from insurance physicals to delivering babies.

One of his patients was his brother-in-law, Ben Weisel. "He was a great doctor," Weisel said. "He always, you might say, took care of me informally."

Weisel, 101 and living in California, said while age and health kept the two men from visiting in person, they still kept in touch. "We talked on the phone every day about medical problems, politics, family," Weisel said. "When I needed him, he was there."

He is also survived by a daughter, Suzanne; another son, Leslie; and three grandchildren. Suzanne and Leslie are doctors.