Longtime Santa Rosa doctor Peter Baginsky dies at 64

In January, Peter Baginsky suffered a fall while working, likely a result of balance problems brought on by the brain cancer he was fighting. He was the faculty member in charge of doctors in training who were seeing diabetes patients at Vista Family Health Center in Santa Rosa.

He fell just before the last patient arrived, breaking his hip - an excruciating injury. But he insisted on seeing the patient before getting treatment himself.

It was the final patient the longtime Santa Rosa physician and renowned diabetes specialist saw. He died Nov. 14 after a six-year battle with brain cancer. He was 64.

“I don’t know how he did it,” his wife, Cheryl Hanson, marveled. “In addition to being generous, kind, brilliant, sweet and funny, he had tremendous strength of character. If a job needed to be done, he stuck with it.”

That persistence applied equally to his work and personal life, his children Marina Lowe of Salt Lake City and Rowan Baginsky of San Francisco said.

“He never wanted to give up on a hike, even if it was 120 degrees outside,” Rowan Baginsky said. He has a picture on his bookcase of he and his dad standing, arms around each other, atop Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. It was the summer of 2008 and they had gotten up before dawn to make the peak. It was about six months before Peter Baginsky was diagnosed with cancer.

“I’m just so glad we did it,” Rowan Baginsky said. “It was a really special trip.”

Peter Baginsky had a lifelong love of hiking, travel and adventure, something his family says was probably sparked by long boat trips to Europe when he was a child.

His parents, both physicians, emigrated to the United States from then-Czechoslovakia following World War II to escape communism. But, homesick for Europe, they made frequent trips back over the years.

That love of travel led Baginsky and his wife to head to Afghanistan with the Peace Corps in 1974, just months after they met, fell in love and got married.

“We were lucky with the Peace Corps,” Hanson said. “We basically had a two-year honeymoon.”

Not everyone’s idea of a honeymoon, though: There was neither water nor electricity.

“We thought if we could manage that, we could manage anything,” she said. Indeed, their marriage thrived for the next 40 years, as the couple had two children, Baginsky attended Harvard Medical School and the family moved to Santa Rosa so Baginsky could begin a UCSF family medicine residency at what was then known as Community Hospital, now Sutter.

Following his residency, Peter Baginsky completed a fellowship in diabetes at UCSF, then joined Sutter Doctors’ Group as a diabetes specialist. He also taught in the UCSF Family Medicine Residency and in the Vallejo primary care department of Touro University Medical School until he was too sick to continue.

The Harvard-trained doctor presented his research at numerous international American Diabetes Association conferences and received many honors for his medical expertise, including Santa Rosa Family Medicine Alumnus of the Year.

Despite those accomplishments, he was a humble man, driving a beat-up old Volvo station wagon the family affectionately called “the dogmobile” to work for many years.

One time, he parked it in a space designated for physicians and came back after a long night of work to a note that read, “This space is reserved for doctors,” Lowe recalled.

“He was just a regular person. He didn’t act like he was any different,” she added.

Baginsky’s proudest accomplishments likely centered around his practice and the raising of his children, his family said. But he was also a sort of renaissance man: He was a world traveler and outdoors person who loved the redwoods around his home in Forestville and was committed to social justice causes such as ending South African apartheid. He spoke seven languages, painted and played multiple instruments, and somehow always found time for his kids, Lowe said.

“He was an incredible artist and father as well.”

A memorial celebration will be at 1 p.m. Sunday Dec. 7 at the Church of One Tree in Juilliard Park in Santa Rosa.