Tom Black
Former Regina MD Dies - Regina Leader Post December 30, 1996
A long-serving Regina obstetrician and gynecologist who always put his patients first has died.
Dr. Thomas Murray Black died at the Victoria General Hospital in Victoria on Thursday December 26. He was 73. He had been admitted to hospital shortly before Christmas following a stroke.
Black was born in Regina and spent most of his professional life here, delivering hundreds of babies and serving on several medical committees until he retired in 1982. Black moved to Victoria that year with his wife Shirley.
"He liked delivering babies and he liked the joy and delight that brought into peoples' lives," said his daughter Susan Schwann.
"He was a prince of a man, no doubt about it," recalled Dr. Kevin Murphy, Black's longtime partner at the Medical and Dental Building downtown. "He was a gentleman, in both senses of the word."
Murphy remembered how both he and Black each spent many Christmases delivering babies. On many weekends and holidays they would encounter each other at the hospital, working. "He lived for his work and his patient's always came first. This is the hallmark of a good physician," said Murphy.
Black obtained his medical degree from Queen's University in Kingston. He worked for two years as a family practitioner in Maryfield in southeast Saskatchewan, before obtaining his speciality in obstetrics and gynecology in Winnipeg.
Black liked reading, walking and spending time in the sun Murphy said. He also liked to garden with his wife in Victoria. The couple often drove to Florida to spend several weeks there each spring. Black is survived by Shirley, his wife of 48 years, and their children David and Peggy Black, Susan and Dick Schwann and Bob and Gail Black, as well as many grandchildren nieces and nephews.
"He was a happy man. He liked what he did for a living and he liked spending time with his family and he didn't have time for much else," Shirley Black said.