Paul Stephen Ducker MD

Paul Stephen Ducker, esteemed long-time Rockland psychiatrist died peacefully at home of natural causes related to a long battle with cancer on May 31. He was 74 years old.

The son of Charlotte and Isadore Ducker, Dr. Ducker was born March 10, 1942, at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. He and his brother Kenneth were raised in Yonkers, New York, where he attended Yonkers High School and then Columbia University, where he was an active member of student government and on the varsity swim team, a hobby he maintained for life.

Inspired by a summer serving a remote tribe in the Andes Mountains of Peru decimated by malnutrition, Paul attended New York University School of Medicine. He completed service for the Carnegie Foundation studying tuberculosis in remote areas of Nigeria, then was a resident at Roosevelt Hospital and an intern at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, eventually devoting his life to the struggle to understand and treat the causes of depression and mental illness.

Dr. Ducker served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War era with the rank of major and overseeing a psychiatric inpatient hospital with lifelong friend Dr. Larry Shindelman at Ford Ord, California, where they treated several thousand veterans returning from tours of duty in southeast Asia.

He returned to the New York area in 1974 to serve as director of impatient services at the Rockland County Mental Health Center, a position he held until 1998. During those years he helped shape the County's mental health programs and services, and became a mentor to many of his generation of young psychiatrists and other mental health professionals.

He served as the president of the West Hudson chapter of the American Psychiatric Association from 1991 to 1993. He was also an emergency room psychiatrist at Good Samaritan Hospital until the early 2000s and maintained an active private practice until earlier this year - happy to continue treating a fiercely loyal group of patients even as his health began to decline.

Paul married Shirley Flanders of Woonsocket, South Dakota on December 5th, 1968, and remained a devoted husband throughout their 49-year marriage. A dedicated and deeply caring father to Adam Ducker and his wife Shelley of Bethesda, Maryland, and Amy Cohen and her husband Matt of St. George, Vermont, Paul was a hockey and soccer coach, board member of the Rockland Country Day School, and informal counselor and confidant to hundreds of people from every walk of life.

Throughout his life and with increasing voracity during the years of semi-retirement, Paul and Shirley Ducker remained avid travelers, spending extended periods of time in Europe, Asia and Africa, always inspired by the complexity of human societies and the resilience of the human spirit.

In addition to his wife, children and brother, Dr. Kenneth Ducker of Oakland, California, Paul is also survived by three loving grandchildren, Zara and Vivi Ducker and Noah Cohen, and several nieces and nephews and their extended families.

Shiva is being observed privately, and a memorial service open to the public will be held on Saturday, June 4th, at 2:00 p.m. at Wanamaker & Carlough Funeral Home at 177 NY-59, Suffern, New York

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