Fairfield clinic garden honors 9/11 fatality
Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
FAIRFIELD — The day after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the staff at Maine-Dartmouth Family Practice learned that one of their own was among the dead.
Maine-Dartmouth Family Practice in Fairfield dedicated a garden on Saturday to the late Dr. Frederick C. Rimmele, a former resident at the facility who was on one of the two planes that slammed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
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Frederick C. Rimmele III, a resident doctor at the practice from 1994 to 1997, was aboard United Airlines Flight 175 when hijackers flew it into the World Trade Center in New York, killing all aboard.
He was 32.
On Saturday, Rimmele was remembered by friends and family during the dedication of a memorial garden in his honor behind the practice. It joins memorial benches as tributes to his life — one in Marblehead, Mass., where he was living at the time of his death; and another at his alma mater, Amherst College, in Amherst, Mass.
"Fred loved Maine and I'm sure he would have come back here someday," said Dr. Cathy Morrow, associate director of Maine-Dartmouth's residency program. "We're really glad he has a spot in Maine now."
America was still reeling from the attacks on the Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., when the Maine-Dartmouth staff learned that Rimmele had been aboard one of the doomed airliners while on his way to a medical conference in California.
Nurses Sylvanne Pontin and Robin Cournoyer recalled the news spreading through the close-knit practice quickly. The staff was in tears — some reacting with anger, others crumbling and stunned.
"We almost closed the office when we heard," Pontin said. "Then we said, no, we're not going to let terrorists do this to us."
It was by remembering Rimmele's love of life, his irreverent sense of humor and his deep desire to heal that staff and friends dealt with the tragedy. On Saturday, they sought to remember the good things they had learned from the young doctor with the ponytail, and the good times they shared with him.
Morrow said the staff loved the idea of a garden to honor Rimmele because it would be a changing and evolving thing, like life itself.
The garden was designed and built with the aid of Andrew Woodward of Vassalboro. It is a simple place of stone, water and greenery.
Rimmele's friend and fellow doctor Michael Lambke of Skowhegan said Rimmele was an avowed skeptic who went to church faithfully and loved to talk about the deeper mysteries of life.
He would have appreciated the symbolism of a place of reflection filled with growing things, Lambke said.
"Why do plants grow? Why do they die?" Lambke said. "It is a mystery, but it is such a beautiful process."
Rimmele's wife, Kimberly Trudel, attended the dedication along with his parents, Marilyn and Frederick C. Rimmele Jr.
Trudel spoke of how her late husband's outlook on life had begun to change toward the end of his own, and how he felt it was important to live every moment as if it might be one's last.
"Over time, he began to say more and more, 'Life is a precious gift,' " Trudel said.
Rimmele was an avid bird-watcher, and his father said he would have loved the memorial garden and the birds drawn to it.
Birds gathered there Saturday as rain fell, watched by Maine-Dartmouth staff with tears in their eyes, who paused to study the inscription on a plaque among the flowers reading simply, "In Memory of Fred Rimmele. A dedicated physician and a lover of the outdoors."
"His time up here was one of the most pleasurable times in his life," his father said. "All I can say is thank you. Thank you so very much, and God bless all of you."
Born and raised in Clifton, N.J., Rimmele did his undergraduate work at Amherst College and completed doctoral studies at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C.
He did his first year of residency at the Augusta site of Maine-Dartmouth, which provides a residency program for MaineGeneral Health. He then spent two years at the Fairfield location, becoming one of the new program's first students.
Jonathan Humphrey — 861-9252
jhumphrey@centralmaine.com