Dr. Leon Peltz, 81
Dr. Leon Peltz, a New York City physician with a 40-year-long attachment to the East End, died at his North Haven home on Jan. 8. He was 81 and had suffered from diabetic and hypertensive heart disease, his family said.
Dr. Peltz’s life encompassed flying around the world in military and civilian aircraft, studying medicine in Europe, and practicing in Manhattan, but he apent much of the last 15 years on North Haven, serving on the Southampton Town Disability Advisory Committee and otherwise being active in the community.
He was born on Aug. 4, 1934, to Julius Peltz and the former Anna Katz. He grew up in Mount Vernon, N.Y. His family said he was an exceptional student who went to Cornell University at 16.
After graduating, he served four years in the Air Force’s Military Air Transport Service, during which he met and married Barbara Loreto. He was discharged with the rank of captain and with skills he would later put to use during medical school vacations, flying cargo airlines that provided tuition money and a wealth of stories. One involved flying a planeload of 1,500 live, pregnant minks from a breeder in Norway to one in Japan over the polar ice cap in a propeller plane.
Always open to the world and new experiences, he started medical school at the Municipal University of Amsterdam, undaunted by the fact that he spoke no Dutch. He learned the language quickly, helped by the universality of the language of science, his family said.
After earning what was known as a candidate’s degree in Amsterdam, he earned a doctorate at the New York State University Downstate Medical Center, trained in internal medicine at the former St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan, and then in gastroenterology in Rochester, N.Y., and overseas in London.
While conducting a practice in Manhattan from 1968 to 2002, he also served at times as the medical director of Coltec Industries, associate medical director for Time Inc., and medical director of the home care department at St. Vincent’s, where he was an attending physician.
He relished his solo practice as an opportunity to get to know the wide range of people who walked through his doors as patients, from executives and entertainers to an order of nuns. Patients knew him, his family said, as a caring and generous doctor who took time to talk and treat them as individuals.
While living in New York, he and his wife were also regulars and then homeowners in the Sag Harbor area. They made North Haven their home after his retirement in 2002.
Beyond his professional accomplishments, he was a jazz aficionado who could name the players on a recording he hadn’t heard in years, a thoughtful conversationalist, and a man who brimmed with kindness, knowledge, optimism, and a gentle desire to see others thrive.
His wife and his daughter, Jennifer Peltz, a former East Hampton Star reporter and editor who now lives in Manhattan, survive him.
A memorial will be held at a later date. Memorial contributions have been suggested to Human Resources of the Hamptons, 168 Hill Street, Southampton 11968.