Clair Beard Read (CLAIR BEARD, M.D.)

Clair Beard Read (née Clair Jean Beard) died on July 31, 2021 while on vacation with her husband and daughter in Vermont. She was born on July 21, 1959 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Barbara Wartella Beard and Bruce Raymond Beard. Clair’s family lived in Walnut Creek, California, Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, and Hallowell, Maine before moving to West Brookfield, Massachusetts. She graduated from Quaboag Regional High School in Warren, Massachusetts in 1977 and completed a six-year combined B.S./M.D. program at Wilkes College and Hahnemann University in 1983.

Clair was not yet 24-years old when she began an internship in pediatric medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester. She was there for one year before changing course, first entering a post-doctoral program in physical biochemistry at Boston University Medical Center and then retraining in radiation oncology. After one year at BU, she transferred to the Joint Center for Radiation Therapy at Harvard Medical School. Upon completion of her training in 1988, Clair was invited to join the JCRT. She worked at New England Baptist Hospital/Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center from 1988-1995 and at Mount Auburn Hospital/BIDMC from 1995-2000. In 2001 she joined the faculty at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Brigham and Women’s Hospital. At the time of her retirement Clair was Director of the Testicular Cancer Center at the Dana-Farber/Brigham Cancer Center, Vice Chair of the Division of Genitourinary Radiation Oncology in the Department of Radiation Oncology, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Clair wished that she had attended a four-year liberal arts program prior to medical school. There was so much she wanted to learn—not only more science but literature, music, history, and much else. Her father insisted that Clair’s high-school ambition to become an astronaut was unrealistic—astronauts were men, not women—and that Clair should instead become a physician. An accelerated B.S./M.D. program (and living with her grandmother for the two years she spent at Wilkes) made attending medical school possible. But she hit the trifecta in her decision to pursue academic medicine; the combination of clinical work, teaching, and research suited her perfectly. A drawer full of letters from grateful patients recorded her extraordinary skill, thoroughness, and compassion as a clinician. Tributes from former students and colleagues registered her exceptional contributions as teacher, mentor, and researcher as well as clinician—her meticulous notes and patient planning, her encyclopedic knowledge of the literature, and her adeptness at handling the most difficult cases. She was, it was said, a consummate physician.

Clair lectured nationally and internationally on all types of genitourinary malignancies, but her area of greatest impact was in testicular cancer where her research into the late effects of radiation for seminoma led her to take a bold stand against the use of radiation in stage I seminoma. This position was initially unpopular within the radiation oncology profession, but her research, leadership, and advocacy played a critical role in the adoption of observation, rather than radiation, as the standard of care in national guidelines, thereby sparing nearly 10,000 men per year the receipt of adjuvant radiation for seminoma in the United States alone and many more men worldwide.

Friends, colleagues, and even casual acquaintances recognized Clair for her independent spirit, her distinctive fashion sense, her flair for decorating, and her generous attention and advice. When not prevented by ill-health, she celebrated birthdays and holidays richly. Recipients of her gifts remember intricately wrapped packages that were a delight to behold. Neighbors recall Halloween nights, always with at least five large, finely carved pumpkins on the front steps. Visitors at Christmastime recall the phalanx of Santa Clauses on the staircase. Family and friends knew her as a chef to be reckoned with, always eager to try a new recipe, never seeing the point to preparing a “simple” meal.

Clair suffered a catastrophic fall at home shortly before Thanksgiving Day in 2015, a fall that resulted in multiple fractures to her spine. It was late Sunday morning. She had just conceived a solution to a knotty patient treatment problem and was on the way to the hospital to oversee its implementation when she slipped and fell down a flight of stairs. As a consequence of her injuries she was forced to retire early, and she contended with chronic, severe pain for the rest of her life. The pain was debilitating. Her retirement from medicine was devastating.

Clair’s contributions to her patients, colleagues, and medical research are all the more remarkable in light of the many diseases and injuries with which she herself had to contend, both before and after her accident in 2015. That she accomplished and gave as much as she did is remarkable by itself, but to have done so while enduring so much ill-health and pain is difficult to imagine. She took inspiration from the life of Marie Salomea Skłodowska Curie, whose pioneering research in physics and chemistry provided the foundation for radiobiology. Indeed the highlight of Clair’s trip to Paris in late 2019 was her visit to the Musée Curie.

Clair is survived by her husband James, daughter Anna Rose, mother Barbara, sister Sarah Beard Buckley, and brother Bruce Beard, Jr.