Dr. J. Rollin Otto Jr.

Joseph Rollin Otto, Jr., the husband of Lucy Fallon Otto, the brother/cousin to Louise Schnaufer, the father of Susan Gilbert, Helen Tuten, Jay Otto, the uncle of Cynthia Allan, the grandfather of Seth, Devin, Nicholas, Gabriella, Madelyn, Caleb, Abiwren, and William, and the great grandfather of Liam Charles Levasseur, passed away on June 5, 2022. Rollin was born in Baltimore in 1932. He started school at The Calvert School. He then transitioned to Gilman, where he graduated in 1951. He went on to Princeton University, graduating in 1955. He married Lucy on June 21, 1955 and started Medical School at the University of Maryland in the fall. He graduated Medical School in 1959 and continued his training at Union Memorial Hospital and then continued at Union for the rest of his career in Internal Medicine/endocrinology. He retired in March of 1994.

Rollin was named Boppy by his oldest grandson, Seth, and has been known by this loving moniker to all the younger generations since. The Bop was a man of order, predictability, and loved nothing more than a plan. (He packed for a trip with a spread sheet in hand. Well, actually, once spread sheets were a thing, most tasks, whether it be yard maintenance, scheduling of doctor’s appointments, or keeping track of weight and blood pressure, were recorded and tracked in a spread sheet.) Bop enjoyed being in charge and was forever the supervisor of all tasks and the designer of the system to complete said tasks. His systems generally worked and rarely needed to be updated. If something began to wear or fray, generally it could be gathered and held together with an old piece of string tied with multiple half hitches in a straight line. As a younger man he was an avid badminton, croquet, and ping pong player and excelled at all. He was archly competitive and never played Daddy ball. He was a card shark and taught all of his grandchildren to shuffle; if the cards spilled as they shuffled he would ask, “Do you need the basket?” The grandchildren gleefully posted a score card on the refrigerator whenever they had taken down The Bop. He was relentless in Parcheesi, never missing a chance to send an opponent home and taking his extra 20 spaces.

After retirement, Bop enjoyed yearly trips to Florida with Lucy where they enjoyed fresh strawberries, visiting the same restaurants year after year (and probably ordering the same thing year after year), watching spring training of their beloved Orioles and their competition, (Lucy became quite the statistician in her later years, and he relied on her stored data), and doing Sudoku’s -- printed up prior to travel and attached neatly to a clip board -- together. Upon retirement, he began to read books and enjoyed medical mysteries; he and Lucy often read the same series, and they enjoyed discussing them together. They recorded and watched TV shows together.

No one can think of Lucy without Rollin. Or Mom without Dad. Or Grammy without Bop. Their hearts have beat as one for over 65 years. She read him his Medical School textbooks because she could read out loud faster than he could read to himself. She got up when he got up to have breakfast with him every morning. She waited dinner until he came home every day. In later years, they created beautiful wooden creations together; they grocery shopped together; they folded laundry together; they made their bed together…literally and figuratively. He held her hand as she passed away, and I know, without a doubt, she was holding his…And Love, true love, will follow you forever.

In lieu of flowers, send donations to Hunt’s Church, 1912 Old Court Rd, Towson, MD 21204, Saint Matthews By-the-Sea United Methodist Church, 1000 Coastal Hwy, Fenwick Island, DE 19944, or Tender Care Nursing, LLC, 505 Heathland Trail, Aberdeen, MD 21001