Philip Ford Parshley, age 90, passed away on July 16th, 2022. He was born in Hartford, Connecticut to Philip Ford Parshley (Sr.) and Dorothy Parker Parshley. His intrepid intelligence helped him excel both at the Loomis Chaffee School and outside the classroom, developing a lifelong passion for sailing and skiing. As a slender teenager with a dimpled smile, he was working as a sailing instructor at Hammonasset Beach State Park the summer he met his beloved wife, Barbara Vaughan Parshley.

Shortly after entering college, Phil lost his mother to gastric cancer. Her loss spurred him into an accelerated medical track, graduating from Dartmouth College in 1953, Dartmouth Medical School in 1954 and Harvard Medical School in 1956. After marrying in 1953, Bobbie and Phil moved to Boston, where Phil completed his residency at the Boston City Hospital, followed by a fellowship in surgery at the Lahey Medical Center.

Phil became interested in burn care after enlisting in the Air Force in 1961, moving his growing family to Wichita, Kansas. A loving and gentle father, Phil taught his four children—Marianne, Jeff, Philip, and Lisa—by example, combining an impish sense of humor with a quiet compassion. He also taught them to care passionately about their work; when dinner was interrupted by calls from the hospital, “we could tell if it was bad news because he put his head in his hands—he felt his patients’ pain,” Marianne remembers.

Always looking for outdoor adventure, the family relocated to Oregon in 1963, camping along the coast in a beat-up Chevy station wagon. There, Phil volunteered at Mount Hood Meadows as a doctor-on-call for ski patrol and joined the Vancouver Lake Sailing Club, where he would later serve as Commodore, racing with his kids and grandchildren in North American Lightning competitions. 

In 1973, Phil established the Oregon Burn Center with Dr. Fred Bieker and Carolyn Wecks-Bartlett, quickly becoming a national leader in burn care. A humble man, he emphasized the team nature of medicine, treating his colleagues like family. “I was so proud to be on his burn team. He set the bar high for all of us,” one of his former nurses recalls, adding, “He was an easy man to love.” He regularly performed miracles, but mostly, his OR team recalls, “Phil was a role model for us all. Not just his inspired and talented care for his patients, but as a man in this life.” 

Phil built close relationships with firefighters around the state, providing emergency care training at fire stations, and coaching doctors internationally, including in China and the Dominican Republic. When he retired from practice, he served as director of the Oregon Medical Board for over a decade, keeping his skills sharp by teaching his grandchildren to suture on the Thanksgiving turkey. He never lost his sense of adventure, exploring from Antarctica to Australia in his later years with Bobbie.