Posted on 02/16/2018
Velma Elizabeth Coffin Kwart, MD, (affectionately known as Dr. Beth) of Phoenix, AZ, passed peacefully into the next life Sunday, February 4th, 2018. She was 95. For all who knew her, leaving on Super Bowl Sunday was apropos. In fact, it is rumored that the thought of Tom Brady and the Patriots playing in yet another championship game was the last straw.
Born during the October harvest of 1922 to Vernon Coffin and his wife, Velma Rowe Coffin in a farmhouse at the crossroads of two rural Iowa roads, her life was broader than the expansive sky over fields in which she grew up shucking corn. Knowing from an early age that dusting and other home chores were not at all her interest, she became fascinated with medicine and performed what was perhaps Iowa's first stone heart transplant into a porcelain doll at the tender age of 8.
She graduated top of her class from Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa, with double majors in Music and English, then taught high school English to fund her way through pre-med and then medical school at University of Iowa, Iowa City, where she graduated valedictorian. She worked doubly hard to earn a place in the surgical residency program. A pioneer for female physicians everywhere, she navigated around the prevailing sentiment that providing a woman that level of education would be a waste. She went on to graduate as the first female surgeon in the state of Iowa.
She drove the Alaskan Highway, before it was paved, to her first real paying surgical position at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage. It was there that she developed a deep interest and passion for helping Native American populations. It was also there that she met the love of her life, LCDR Philip Kwart, a "mustang" US Naval Academy graduate and pilot, who was stationed in the arctic piloting a P2V-Neptune. His mission: assisting the Nautilus submarine navigate the polar ice cap. Together they lived in Washington State, Southern California, and Australia before settling in Arizona, where she once again took a position with the Indian Health Service. In her new position, she found herself perfecting surgical techniques to minimize amputation of diabetic limbs, serving as a trauma surgeon repairing knife and gun wounds, and surgically managing end-stage liver disease patients. In her 60's she was diagnosed with Addison's disease, her beloved husband passed away and she retired from surgery. She did not retire from life however, and lived the next 30 years abundantly with family, world travel and continued learning.
An excellent pianist, she played organ and sang in the choir at many of the churches the family attended. She was a beloved co-pilot, navigator, world traveler, surgeon, mother, musician, gardener and friend. Up until her last few months, she kept up with her Hawkeye football team, read the Wall Street Journal and New York Times daily, and played scrabble in Spanish. Those she knew were often recipients of "clippings" she felt relevant for their lives. Her valued input and twinkling bright blue eyes will be missed.
She is survived by five children: Gary (Cynthia) Kwart, Moshe (Eta) Kwart, Rebecca (Kato) Kwart-Wilson, Barbara (Mike) Shaw Snyder, and Ruth Kathryn Rodie; nine grandchildren: Eli (Daphne) Kwart, Yossi (Dikla) Kwart, Shoshana (Shlomo) Kwart-Ashkanazy, Gary Shaw, Phillip (Shawntel) Shaw, Hartley (Lauren) Rodie, Yona (Zeevik) Moreli, Preston Rodie and Alon Kwart; 16 great-grandchildren, and one on the way; and her brother Allen (Phyllis) Coffin.
Services will be held upon her interment in Iowa, where she will rest near her grandparents, parents, brothers Herbert D. and Richard R. Coffin, and Richard's wife Lucille. In lieu of flowers the family suggests donations be made to the National Adrenal Diseases Foundation in her memory.
Published in The Arizona Republic on Feb. 17, 2018