In Memoriam: Richard (Rick) Finch, MD ( - Nov. 12, 2022)
Remembering Rick
It is with great sadness that our family announces the death of Richard M. Finch, cherished husband and beloved father. He passed from complications of a stem cell transplant for acute myeloid leukemia.
Rick’s formative years were spent in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he met his future wife, Paula, in a kindergarten tap dancing class. An apt student, great baseball and tennis player, dancer, and lover of the details of science, he was also a fun and well-liked guy. Rick and Paula had their first date at the Valentine’s Day Sweetheart Dance in junior high school. Separated at the end of Rick’s sophomore year of HS, they corresponded over the years and met again somewhat serendipitously in London.
Graduating from Stanford, Rick attended medical school at the University of California in San Francisco. He and Paula were married at Villa Montalvo, close to her teaching assignment in Los Altos. They moved to Rochester, NY, where he was a resident in the family medicine program. After Rick’s residency, they took a year off to travel around the world with packs on their backs, spending three months in India in the hill station of Mussoorie, where Rick practiced medicine, and Paula taught. On that trip while in Singapore, he accepted a job in family practice with Group Health in Olympia.
Rick practiced medicine in Olympia for more than thirty years, where he and Paula reared their family, welcoming two children, Jocelyn and Jordan. He loved the idea of taking care of entire families and delivered babies for the first fifteen years of practice. He was a compassionate, caring, and detailed doctor, who enjoyed the problem-solving that medicine demanded. Adored by his patients, he was constantly hailed while out and about. Although working long hours, he always made time for his own family, was a loving and involved father, and worked hard to participate in his children’s many activities.
Building things brought Rick immense joy. Buying an old farmhouse with a great barn, his engineering skills emerged as he and Paula made it into a wonderful home over the years. The apple trees there provided fabulous apple cider-pressing parties with swings in the barn and hidey holes in the hay bales. Rick’s greatest building project was a new house on Puget Sound. Taking a year’s sabbatical for the endeavor, he helped from the milling of the lumber for the house from the forest to the finishing details of the indoor trim. Over the years he added many creative structures to the property that overlooked the Sound with the Olympic Mountains in the background.
Rick took full advantage of other sabbatical leaves, with travel continuing to set the tone for many working medical experiences, in New Zealand, Barbuda/Antigua, and Australia. These early trips included time off for family adventures, homeschooling while away, and learning about other cultures. Many friendships evolved during these travels. Later adventures revolved around biking. He and Paula took their Bike Fridays to Spain to bike the Camino de Santiago and did other biking trips with friends in Holland and England.
Our family says goodbye to our gentle hero and role model with heavy hearts. Just shy of seventy-five years, Rick’s was a life well lived and loved. The Beatles summed it up singing, “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”. A large picnic sometime this coming summer will be arranged to celebrate his life. Memorable contributions to favorite charities would make Rick happy.