Recent transplants to the Damariscotta area may best know Dr. Avantaggio, if at all, as the kindly old man who tended Skidompha’s Secondhand Book Shop in recent years. By then, Dr. Avantaggio was long established as a pillar of the community.
Back in the days before medicine had become the Byzantine morass it appears to be today, Dr. Avantaggio was the one guy Lincoln County residents associated with their surgical care.
Time was, when locals talked about being operated on, they were discussing Dr. Avantaggio’s handiwork. It’s hard to imagine now that surgeons have specialized themselves to the nth degree, but as a surgeon, Dr. A took on all comers.
If he had done nothing else but operate, his contribution to the community would have been immense and his standing in the community assured, but as our front-page story makes clear this week, Dr. Avantaggio’s legacy continues in large part in the people he inspired who carry on his work today.
