DOCTOR’S TRAGIC DEATH HURTS US ALL

Ocean County Observer

August 28, 1979

Maxwell Klausner, president elect of the Ocean County Medical Society, was struck down suddenly August 24 on his way home from visiting a patient in the hospital, by a driver alleged to have been drunk and unlicensed at the time. Max was changing the tire of his car with the help of a good samaritab who also suffered grievously in the accident. Mrs. Klausner was severely injured.

The vehicles, their parts will be recycled into useful commodities but Max is lost to us forever. It is often said that none of us is replaceable. All can find an adequate of more than adequate substitute. We may be missed but are not indispensable.

That is true to an extent. Society can manage its losses and overcome its deficits. But make no mistake, the death of Dr. Klausner is a loss that can be overcome but not repaired. There is no way that one can find a substitute for his combination of subjective and objective qujalities. Put 20 persons through the same educational experience and twenty individuals will emerge each with his own unique perception, each epererssing the educational experience uniquely according to his lights.

So with Max Klausner, a special amalgam is lost. A community man who perofmed communal acts in his life and profession. He was a man without malice.He was born prior to the age of antibiotics and his medical experience ranged wide and spanned many yeards during which the profession changed direction, and burnished new accomplishments at an alarming rate. Having seen medicine admit its errors, rewtrace its steps, and push into new frontiers, Max was sure of thefact as a phyhsician that outcome is never assured. One must knoiw when to tip-toe, when to chance it when to play it safe. Because as always in this profession, a life is at stake.

Max was a good physician and one cannot be a good physicians by being “right” all the time. Max had been through the medical crucible. His knowledge and experience finally became aneealed. He had learned his boundaries. This special combination is not easilty reproducable. Death in the active years of any of its servants robs society. The death of Max Klausner dinminishes us by that which was his essence, his tradition, his history, his life.