Phillip Z. Aronow, MD

Dr. Phillip Z Aronow, a general surgeon in South Jersey for over 40 years died on March 9, 2024 in Key West, Florida, where he and his wife, Nila, had spent the winter months since his retirement from private practice. He was 89.

Most people called him Dr. Aronow. A skilled surgeon and leader in his professional community, he was especially valued by his patients and the people he worked with for his empathy and grace under pressure. “I always thought he was like Columbo,” a nurse at Virtua/Voorhees once remarked. “He would walk casually into a patient’s room, a little rumpled. He'd look, listen, ask a few questions, and then he'd come up with exactly the right answer.”

Phillip Zalman Aronow was born in Camden, New Jersey on October 20, 1934, to Jewish Immigrants from Eastern Europe. His father, Alex Aronow. was a sheet metal worker; his mother, Reba Patkin Aronow, was a housewife.

He grew up, with all the other kids on Langham Avenue, playing stick ball and other street games. Although he started out a low-key student, by junior high and high school, his keen interest in all topics science began to win him recognition and major awards in biology and other sciences. At the same time, he was a top player on the tennis team, took part in the musical comedies and won the school’s very prestigious prize, the Public Speaking Contest.

Phillip Aronow’s work ethic started when, at nine years old, he pedaled to several adjoining neighborhoods besides his own to cover his very extensive paper route. When he was a little older, he learned new skills and many new curse words working for his uncle's roofing company. Even as a college student, he was able to work part time for Schaevitz Engineering, and for what was then called RCA.

Phil had always assumed he’d be a mechanical engineer like his older brother and his cousin, and he earned a BSME from the University of Pennsylvania in 1957. He had just started working towards his Master’s degree, when, two weeks into the semester, a chance conversation with his new wife led him to realize that what he really wanted to be was a doctor -- possibly a surgeon.

Two years later, after he earned his Master's in mechanical engineering, he enrolled in Jefferson Medical College, where he was elected to the Hare Medical Society. He graduated in 1963, by now the father of two daughters and still working part time as an engineer to make ends meet. He was tempted by an offer of a highly ranked residency in radiology but ultimately decided to follow his first instinct and chose to train as a surgical intern and resident at Cooper Hospital in Camden.

It was a very consequential decision: he had seen surgery as a specialty that would involve the direct patient content he wanted, and indeed, it proved to be career that gave him great satisfaction and fulfilment.

As a surgeon he could and did need to be quick-thinking, fast on his feet. He needed to be smart enough to make diagnoses, skillful enough to make his fingers to do what they needed to do. In the operating room he proved to be dispassionate enough to be cool under pressure and yet passionate about his patients, spending endless hours listening and talking to families, helping them to understand and to cope with what was happening.

But before he could go into private practice, Dr. Aronow had to go into the military For him it was the United States Public Health Service, Division of Indian Health , and in 1968, he moved his wife and, by now, four daughters to Tahlequah, Oklahoma, where he was appointed Chief of Surgery and Chief of Staff at the Hastings Hospital.

Finally, at the age of 36, Phillip Aronow was ready to begin his 40 years of private practice in Southern New Jersey. He opened offices in Medford and in Camden and for the first five years, also served as Director of Surgical Education at Cooper Hospital. As he built his own practice in the 1970’s, he joined his some of his colleagues to build the Garden State Community Hospital in Marlton, which eventually became part of the Virtua/West Jersey Health System. A decade later, he spearheaded a group that built a medical office building where they eventually installed one of the first MRI facilities in the area.

In 1979, he became Chairperson of the Division of Surgery at Garden State and, from 1984-86, President of its Staff. From 1995-2008 he chaired the Department of Surgery for the Virtua/West Jersey Health System in Voorhees and Marlton. His leadership and dedication to South Jersey medicine was recognized in 2003 when he was honored with the Distinguished Career Award by the Virtua/West Jersey Health System.

Dr. Aronow retired from the practice of surgery in 2010, but he didn’t retire from his medical career. In 2013, he pivoted once more when he trained and became certified in addiction medicine and began seeing patients at Naltrexone, an addiction clinic in Merchantville. He was passionate about the value of new medical treatments for addiction.

For a low-key guy, Phil Aronow had many passions. As a teenager, he taught himself to play tennis. There were certainly no country-clubs or private lessons in his life, but he earned his playing time by doing maintenance on the public courts, became a mainstay on his high school team and played recreational tennis until his shoulders gave out. His older brother, Martin, owned a sailboat that needed lots of TLC and young Phil again earned his keep by being a creative fixer. He loved sailing. He bought his own boat in Oklahoma and sailed it when he could. He was happy to accept any invitation to sail, but his best times were sailing with his friends and classmates from medical school.

While his family didn’t provide country clubs or tennis lessons, they had a vast collection of classical records and tickets to the Philadelphia Orchestra, where they took young Phillip from the time he was seven. And that love of music lasted him throughout his life. As a student at Penn, he would go with friends and sit up in the amphitheater at the Academy of Music. As a more prosperous physician, he treated himself to summer and winter subscriptions, chamber music and opera at the Met. One of his last outings this winter was to a consert of chamber music in Key West.

Phil Aronow never hired a gardener until he became too old to weed a bed. He loved every aspect of nurturing trees and bushes that he raised himself from cuttings. He even designed an innovative greenhouse addition to his family's kitchen so he could bring his plant babies inside for the winter.

He could fix anything with his hands: primarily people. But in his spare time, he also designed and built his own furniture, a giant outdoor tent system for backyard celebrations, his daughters’ stuffed animals.

But perhaps his greatest passion of all was his devotion to family. He was born into a large family of Aronows, with dozens of first cousins who were always finding occasions to be together: Sunday dinners, picnics in the park, weddings and mitzvahs with everybody invited, even the youngest children.

And he grew up to raise a large and close family of his own. In 1957, he married Nila Redlus, whom he’d known since junior high school. As busy as he was, working long hours and many overnights, he was very present in the lives of his four daughters. He would challenge them in math and help with science fairs - sometimes to morbid ends. He nurtured their love of sports, both as participants and fans. He taught them all to swim— some of them quite well.

If there was anybody he loved more than his daughters, it would have been his eleven grandchildren. Though all of them live at some distance, he maintained close relationships with each one and fostered their close relationships with each other: trips to Disney and Washington DC when they were little; family vacations at the beach, travel to Mexico and Barcelona. He treasured their visits to Haddonfield and Key West. One of his last visitors was his baby great-granddaughter, born in July, 2023, the first of what he hoped would be a new generation to love.

Phillip Aronow is survived by his wife Nila; daughters Victoria, Jennifer Brett, Elisabeth and Kerith Aronow; sons-in-law Marshall Duling, Keith Stein, Robert Landeck and Saul Shapiro; grandchildren Rebecca Herrigel (Corey Johnson); Harris and Hadden Duling; Griffin, Baxter and Quincy Stein; Ethan, Allary and Manning Landeck; and Amelia and Toby Shapiro; and great-granddaughter Avery Johnson.

Funeral services were held on Thursday, March 13, 2024 at Platt Memorial Chapels, Inc. 2001 Berlin Rd. Cherry Hill, NJ. Interment Crescent Memorial Park, Pennsauken, NJ.

Contributions in his memory may be made to the American Civil Liberties Union, www.aclu.org.