MARBLEHEAD — For nearly a half-century, Dr. Erwin Hirsch worked to find ways to save other people's lives. Yesterday, the Marblehead surgeon lost his own life when he was pulled from chilly Maine waters a half-hour after his dinghy capsized off the coast of Rockport.
Born in 1935, Hirsch rose to become the leader of Boston Medical Center's trauma surgery section after a storied career that included a year as a U.S. Navy officer in charge in Da Nang, Vietnam. News of his death spread quickly through Boston Medical Center.
"I can confirm that Dr. Hirsch, our chief of trauma surgery, has passed away, and the staff are shocked and saddened by the news," spokesman Maria Pantages said last night.
He led the department for about 25 years.
Two people were in the blue dinghy in Rockport Harbor when someone called the Coast Guard Station in Rockland around 3:10 p.m. to say the dinghy had capsized. A good Samaritan pulled one person from the water around 3:20 p.m. and brought that person to paramedics on shore for hypothermia treatment, but Hirsch was still in the water, according to Coast Guard News.
Hirsch was unconscious when he was pulled out by the crew of a 25-foot Coast Guard boat. The Coast Guard sailors started lifesaving efforts as they tried to get him to paramedics waiting on a pier. The paramedics continued CPR, but Hirsch was later pronounced dead at Penobscot Bay Medical Center.
The water was about 48 degrees with 15 mph winds and 2-foot waves.
Hirsch, a Lee Street resident in Marblehead, was a 1959 graduate of the Universidad de Buenos Aires. He came from there to hospitals around Washington, D.C., then began research with the U.S. Navy, according to the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine.
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