Rudolf Oppenheimer

Rudolf O.F. Oppenheimer, who practiced urology in Santa Rosa for decades, was an old-fashioned kind of doctor: The kind who went to work early, took his time with each patient, then made calls when he got home at night to check on them.

“He did a lot of good in the world,” said his daughter Holly Oppenheimer of Santa Rosa.

He died of heart failure Oct. 10. He was 88.

Oppenheimer was born to a Jewish psychiatrist and his wife in Germany in 1925. As he grew up, the Nazi presence in Germany also grew. In 1938, his family, sensing the danger, sent him to stay with an English family through a program called Kindertransport.

A year later, he was reunited with his father and brother in San Francisco. His mother joined them the following year.

He didn’t dwell much on that period of his life, his daughter said.

Oppenheimer spent his remaining teenage years in San Francisco and then enrolled at UC Berkeley before being inducted into the Army. He served for two years, spending part of the time as an investigator with the Army of Occupation in Japan.

Then he returned to complete his studies at Berkeley and UC San Francisco.

He met his wife, professional violinist Emily Knight, in 1953 at a dinner party. They married the next year. They had a supportive, caring relationship and four children, one of whom died at a young age, his daughter said.

“He was very family-oriented,” she said, recalling him taking her with him on his rounds when she was just 5 or 6 years old.

“He was a very kind and considerate father and husband.”

In 1958, he moved with his family to Santa Rosa, where he started a private practice.

He chose the city in part because he thought he could have a more intimate relationship with patients than he could in San Francisco, Holly Oppenheimer said.

“He realized he’d have time to treat patients the way he wanted,” she said. “He thought it was very important to listen to the patient.”

He became a well-known member of the Santa Rosa medical community and continued his practice into the early 1990s. In the 1970s, he served as chief of staff at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. He continued to help with surgery for a few years after retirement and later became a medical consultant to the California Department of Rehabilitation.

He was also an associate clinical professor at UC San Francisco.

He was a well-dressed man, trim and a little below average height who always wore bow-ties, she said. He had a sense of fun, but also took his commitment to patients very seriously.

“He could be very blunt when he thought someone was not being well taken care of,” she said. “He had a lot of integrity.”

Oppenheimer had a lifelong love of nature and was a charter member of the Redwood Region Ornithological Society.

He was also a life member of the Sierra Club and a regular donor to the Sonoma Land Trust and Marin Agricultural Land Trust. He also volunteered at the Bouverie Preserve in Glen Ellen for many years.

“He was a big proponent of environmental conservation,” Holly Oppenheimer said, recalling with a chuckle pictures of him as a young boy in the mountains, in lederhosen. “As a family, we’d go hiking three weekends out of four.”

He is survived by his wife of 59 years, his daughter Lucy Courtney and her husband, John, ?of Berkeley, daughter Holly and her wife, Peggy, and son Jonathan and his wife, Karen, of Oakland.

The family has not yet set the date for a memorial service.

- Jamie Hansen