Tom's obituary appeared in the Washington Post--below is the a link to the full story. Cut and paste into your browser if you want to see it online...or see below for the text of the article. To view the entire article online, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/a-local-life-tom-taylor-49-taking-the-long-path-to-medicine/2011/08/25/gIQAcbM5iJ_story.html?wpisrc=emailtoafriend A Local Life: Tom Taylor, 49, taking the long path to medicine By Bart Barnes Tom Taylor tried being a forest ranger, brew master, carpenter, lab technician, ranch hand, house painter, construction worker and computer manager. He was in his late 30s before he found his calling as a physician and specialist in gastroenterology. For 13 years, he trained and practiced, in college pre-med courses, medical school, hospital internships, residencies and fellowships. Last month, at the age of 49, he began an appointment to the medical gastroenterology staff at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., and soon after met his first patients there. He died July 31 in a Sunday afternoon traffic accident on a bridge in rural New Hampshire. His van was struck head-on by a car coming from the opposite direction in the town of Carroll, according to his father and news reports, and he died instantly. His wife, Kristin and his sons, James and Benjamin, were with him on a family outing to Mount Washington. They suffered injuries that were not life-threatening. Thomas Henry Taylor, a native Washingtonian who was born Jan. 31, 1962, grew up in Southern Maryland. He had always marched to his own tune. In childhood and adolescence, he did well in school, but to him the routines and strictures were vexing. After graduating from McDonough High School in Charles County, he had little or no interest in attending a traditional college, although he had the grades to do so. Instead, he chose an alternative path, the Sterling Institute in Craftsbury Common, Vt., where he studied forestry in a program that emphasized experiential learning, teamwork and personal bonding. He loved the outdoors, and he was a natural handyman. On construction jobs, which he held from time to time, he could usually figure out how to fix malfunctioning equipment. He later graduated from the University of Vermont, where he majored in geology. He then he earned a living as a house painter and as a maintenance worker on the Appalachian Trail. He was a forest ranger at Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana and at Selway Bitterroot Wilderness in Idaho and Montana. He hiked and learned to manage trains of pack mules. In Marin County, Calif., he supervised a church retreat house. In Chicago, he studied methods of brewing beer, and he was planning to open a brew pub in California. His studies of brewing rekindled a dormant interest in science, and he was feeling that he should, perhaps, try “doing something for the common good,” said his wife, Kristin Wallace Taylor. He thought about a career in medicine, and he began volunteering nights at the emergency room at San Francisco General Hospital in the late 1990s while pursuing pre-med courses at the University of California at Berkeley. He liked it and decided to make a change. “Tom Taylor abhors tedium. In fact, he delights in drastic change,” a National Public Radio reporter said of him in a 2005 program about career changes at midlife. At 38, the future physician put aside his brew pub plans, returned to Washington and enrolled at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. About 15 years older than most of his classmates, he was known as the “class dad.” In 2004, he graduated. “Stocky, affable and brown-bearded,” according to an NPR description, Dr. Taylor was gentle and caring toward patients, and he won an award for his bedside manner. He was in Portland, Ore., for three years of medical residency and then returned to Georgetown for a medical fellowship. In June, he moved to New Hampshire for the job at Dartmouth. Two weeks after Dr. Taylor’s death, KristinTaylor returned to her native Idaho with their two children. They are living with her parents in Bonners Ferry. Other survivors include Dr. Taylor’s parents, the Rev. Arnold G. Taylor and Lilian B. Taylor of Washington; and two sisters, Alice Taylor of Arlington County and Laura Taylor of Carlisle, Pa. “I think one of the remarkable things about being a human being is our ability to transform ourselves,” Dr. Taylor told NPR in the 2005 program. “If you really want to make a change and you can see a path to do it, I think you should do that at any age.”