Stanley Biber facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Dr.
Stanley H. Biber
M.D.
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| Born | May 4, 1923 Des Moines, Iowa, US
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| Died | January 16, 2006 (aged 82) Pueblo, Colorado, US
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| Nationality | American |
| Education | University of Iowa (1948) |
| Occupation | Physician |
| Years active | 1948–2006 |
| Medical career | |
| Profession | Surgeon |
| Institutions | Mt. San Rafael Hospital |
Stanley H. Biber (May 4, 1923 – January 16, 2006) was an American physician.
Contents
Early life
Biber was born to a Jewish family in Des Moines, Iowa as the older of two children and the only son of a father who owned a furniture store and a mother interested in social causes. His parents hoped he would become a pianist or a rabbi, and he briefly considered both before World War II began.
Personal life
While studying at the University of Iowa, Biber practiced weightlifting. He tried out for the Olympic team and narrowly missed the cut.
Biber was divorced several times. He raised nine children with the same wife on a ranch outside Trinidad, Colorado. He was survived by his wife of 11 months, Marylee Biber. He was survived by seven children, seven stepchildren and twenty-two grandchildren, including singer Snatam Kaur by his daughter Prabhu Nam Kaur Khalsa, also a new age singer.
Stanley and Marylee married after working together for four decades; Marylee was a nurse involved with his practice.
Later in life Biber said that he didn't see himself as a religious man.
Career
Military service
Biber served as a civilian employee with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, stationed in Alaska and the Northwest Territory. After the war, he returned to Iowa and enrolled in school, with plans to become a psychiatrist. He graduated from the University of Iowa medical school in 1948.
He began performing surgery while in residency at a hospital in the Panama Canal Zone. Biber then joined the Army, where he was the chief surgeon of a mobile army surgical hospital during the Korean War. He finished his service at what is now Fort Carson, Colorado.
Settling in Trinidad
In 1954, retiring from military service, Biber took a job at a United Mine Workers clinic in Trinidad, Colorado. His original office was in the First National Bank building at the historic heart of the city. Though he originally came to serve the miners, Biber sought to help the whole community and delivered babies, set broken bones, and was considered an excellent surgeon by the town.
Political career
In 1990 a seat on the Las Animas County Board of Commissioners was vacated due to a recall, and Biber ran to fill it. His opponent ran ads in the local paper alleging that Dr. Biber's work had made an unseemly impact on the public image of the community. His campaign countered this with ads saying he had put Trinidad on the map and brought in $750,000 annually to the local economy. Biber won the election by a comfortable margin.
Retirement and late life
Biber retired in 2003, at age 80, because his malpractice insurance premiums had risen to levels which he could not afford. Dr. Bowers finally took over his practice after five years of studying under him. Biber was hospitalized in January 2006 with complications from pneumonia, to which he succumbed on January 16. Bowers said, shortly afterwards, that she never expected to "fill his shoes".
Related media
Journalist Martin J. Smith published a biography of Dr. Biber and Trinidad called Going to Trinidad: A Doctor, a Colorado Town, and Stories from an Unlikely Gender Crossroads in April 2021.
