Deceased May 5, 2017


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In Memory

My father, Bertram W. “Bert” Justus ’53, passed away on May 5 after complications following surgery.

Dad came to Amherst from St. Louis, where he attended John Burroughs School. He majored in organic chemistry, going on to medical school at Washington University School of Medicine. He did his internship at New York Hospital in New York City, where he met and married my mother in 1959. After his stint as a captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps (including a year in Korea), our family settled in California in 1962. He completed his residency at UCLA and moved to Fullerton (north Orange County) where he joined a new group of internists that subsequently grew into the largest internal medicine clinic in the county.

Dad practiced internal medicine and hematology for the next three and a half decades. He served as chief of medicine for the area’s major hospital and was instrumental in establishing hospice care in Orange County. He retired in 1990 to spend more time with family, read (he loved history and science fiction), travel and garden—especially tending to his vast collection of orchids, which he began cultivating in the 1970s.

Amherst always evoked fond memories for Dad, and he was proud to be a Lord Jeff (I’m not sure how he would have felt about the Mammoth …) and was even prouder when both my sister and I went to Amherst.

He is survived by Ellen, his wife of 58 years; son Brad ’82 and Wendy Justus; daughter Andrea ’85 and Greg Kann; and four grandchildren.

Brad Justus ’82