Donald Edward Ware

NORWAY – Donald Edward Ware died peacefully at Stephens Memorial Hospital in Norway on Aug. 12, 2022, due to complications of prostate cancer. He was 79.

Don was born in Camden, N.J. on Oct. 20, 1942 to Rheta and Stuart Ware. After growing up in New Jersey and suburban Philadelphia, Pa., Don went off to Wesleyan University. In addition to completing his pre-med education, Don was a captain and two-way lineman on the football team and a star lacrosse player. He passed this love of sports on to his children and played alongside them all the way from the bunny slopes to a wilderness cross-country ski trip with them at the age of 75. He also stayed ready right up to the end, in the event that Bill Belichick called unexpectedly for some in-game advice.

After Wesleyan, Don spent four years getting his MD (Alpha Omega Alpha) at Albany Medical College and from there onto the University of Rochester for two years of residency. Medical training turned out to be only the second most valuable thing that Don picked up at Rochester, N.Y. as he also met his wife of 52 years, Hilary. After they were married in Denver, Colo. in March of 1970 they both shipped off to Korea for a stint in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, with Don being honorably discharged as a Major.

Don and Hilary moved to Norway in 1974 with their 1-year-old daughter, Molly in tow and their son, Matt in utero. Don and his partner, Bill Medd, established Oxford Hills Internal Medicine and also staffed the Emergency Department overnight themselves, just because it was the right thing to do. He went on to found the oncology department at Stephens Memorial together with Linda McSherry, NP, and teach many medical students and residents as an Adjunct Professor of the Tufts Medical School. He was a sharp mind, listening ear and caring heart for his thousands of patients over 34 years of full-time medical practice and many more in his continued part-time work after retirement. His grandchildren also benefited from his unofficial, later-life pediatric residency, despite sacrificing a few bites of their dessert as the co-pay.

Beyond medicine, Don donated his energy and intelligence to the Oxford Hills and Maine community with long service on the Oxford Hills School Board and the board of the Western Foothills Land Trust. He also worked with the American Cancer Society, for which he received the Frederick G. Payne award in 1992, and served as a moderator and deacon of the Second Congregational Church in Norway. In the winters, he drew great inspiration from teaching skiing and snowshoeing for Maine Adaptive Sports.

Don was the rare renaissance man who could deliver a lamb in a midnight barn, sweet talk a disagreeable oil boiler, give you a stanza of Frost, catch a trout on the fly and make both 6-year-olds and 60-year-olds laugh out loud with equal ease. He engaged life with far-reaching gratitude and deeply cherished the simple wonders of the world, from an osprey on the wing to every single sunset at camp. Don leaned heavily on the wisdom of never saying yes to anything new the first (or second) time it was presented, but he didn’t let that stop him from being talked into two different convertibles, an aged cabin cruiser, or a new pair of jeans, at least now and again.

Husband and dance partner, father and trail guide, grandfather and rainbow chaser, Don lives on in his wife, Hilary; his brother, Robert; his daughter, Molly and son, Matthew, his son-in-law, Khemarin Seng and daughter-in-law, Anne; and his five grandchildren, Benjamin, Ella, Grace, Merritt and Evalene.

He will be honored with a celebration of his life on Sept. 3 at 2 p.m. at the Forum at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School in South Paris.

In lieu of flowers, donations to the American Cancer Society or Western Foothills Land Trust are welcome.