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Dr. Frank O. Avantaggio Jr.’s portrait hangs below the sign for the Frank Avantaggio, M.D. Surgical Suite at the Miles Campus of LincolnHealth in Damariscotta. A longtime surgeon and leader at Miles, Avantaggio died Sunday, Feb. 8. (Photo courtesy Lincoln County Healthcare) |
By J.W. Oliver
Longtime Miles Memorial Hospital general surgeon Dr. Frank O. Avantaggio Jr., of Damariscotta and South Bristol, died Sunday, Feb. 8 at the age of 80.
Avantaggio’s colleagues and hospital leadership remember him as a surgeon of great skill and the last of a generation of doctors who transformed the hospital into a
modern institution.
Lincoln County Healthcare Chief Executive Officer and President Jim Donovan credited Avantaggio with building the foundation for the organization’s “culture of
quality and safety.”
“LincolnHealth owes a very real debt of gratitude to Dr. Avantaggio,” Donovan said in a statement. “Over the past few years health care facilities throughout the
country have made patient safety and quality of care a top priority. LincolnHealth consistently ranks among the best in the United States because from 1967 to 1996 Dr.
Avantaggio insisted on the highest standards from his colleagues and from this institution.
“Because of his extraordinary commitment to the families of this region and because his life and career meant so much to our clinical staff, the operating suite on
the Miles campus was named in his honor in 1996. While other organizations struggle to create and sustain a culture of quality and safety, we seem to come to it quite naturally,
and for that we remember and honor Dr. A.”
Dr. Russ Mack is an anesthesiologist at LincolnHealth and the hospital’s vice president of medical affairs. Mack first met Avantaggio during a pre-employment visit
to the hospital in 1979, and the surgeon had an immediate impact on the young doctor.
“It was obvious that he was serious about taking care of people and he just sort of radiated this gravitas,” Mack said. “He was a born leader.”
The surgeon influenced Mack’s decision to come work for Miles in 1980. Avantaggio was the hospital’s chief of staff at the time.
“He was a mentor,” Mack said. “As time went on, he was a friend. He took care of members of my family; I took care of members of his family.”
Avantaggio had been the only general surgeon at times during his early years with the hospital. In those days, he was always on call.
“Whatever was surgical in this area, he took care of it,” Mack said, from bowel, gall bladder, and hernia surgeries to cesarean sections and hysterectomies. He also
performed orthopedic surgeries until Dr. Edward White joined the staff in the mid-1980s.
Today, the hospital has three general surgeons and three orthopedic surgeons, as well as an OB-GYN, Mack said. The surgeons rotate on-call duties.
As an anesthesiologist, Mack worked side by side with Avantaggio in the operating room.
“He was an elegant surgeon,” Mack said. “He had economy of motion – no wasted moves. You could tell he was comfortable with what he was doing.”
For Avantaggio, the patient always came first. He treated patients and staff alike with respect and received respect in return. “I never heard him raise his voice,”
Mack said.
“It was a pleasure to do anesthesia for him,” Mack said.
Avantaggio left a deep impression on his colleagues.
Mack was a family physician from 1980 to 1988. In 1988, he completed a residency in anesthesiology at Maine Medical Center in Portland, where Avantaggio had
completed his residency more than 20 years before.
Despite the passage of time, the hospital’s staff remembered Avantaggio and spoke about him “with respect and fondness,” Mack said. “He was an impressive guy.”
As an individual, Avantaggio “was not a man of many words, but the words he used were always graceful,” Mack said. “He was economical in his speech as well as his
moves in surgery. He had a very dry sense of humor.”
Avantaggio and the late Drs. Sam Belknap, George Bostwick, and Ralph Powell placed Miles on the road to become the modern institution it is today, Mack said.
“He’s the last person in that generation of doctors that made this place what it is now, from being a little rural hospital that probably couldn’t do much more than
an aid station, to a hospital where modern medicine was practiced,” Mack said.
“We’re going to miss him,” Mack said.
After retirement, Avantaggio was a member of the Damariscotta Board of Selectmen from 1997 to 1999. Charlie Ault was the board’s chairman.
Avantaggio stepped forward to fill a vacant seat at a time when the board desperately needed leadership to face some difficult decisions. “He was a calming influence
on our board and he was an incredible listener,” Ault said.
When he retired from the board, the selectmen declared Dr. Avantaggio Day, and the late Damariscotta Police Chief George Hutchings delivered a proclamation to
Avantaggio.
“He was the superman” of the community, Ault said. “There’s no doubt. If you want to choose a superman of every community, he was the superman. I’m just really
saddened that he died.”
The Lincoln County News Publisher Emeritus Sam Roberts knew Avantaggio from the early days of the Central Lincoln County Ambulance Service.
Avantaggio and other doctors approached Roberts and asked him to start the service in 1972. Later, Avantaggio and his colleagues provided assistance and training to
the ambulance crews.
Roberts called Avantaggio an excellent surgeon and a highly professional man.
“He was a great asset to the town, to the area,” Roberts said.
Avantaggio was a graduate of Kents Hill School, Wesleyan University, and Harvard Medical School. He was in the U.S. Air Force for two years before beginning his
career at Miles.
He was chief of staff at Miles from 1977 to 1981, a member of the Miles Health Care Board of Trustees in the 1990s, and a member of many of the organization’s
committees throughout his career.
He was a longtime volunteer at the Skidompha Secondhand Book Shop in Damariscotta and an avid gardener.
A celebration of his life will take place at Lincoln Academy’s Nelson W. Bailey Gymnasium in Newcastle at 1 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 14.
