Hundreds Remember UW Dean -- Fialkow, Wife Died In Avalanche

The memorial service for Philip and Helen Fialkow characterized the couple's lives - elegant, poetic and unabashedly simple.

The dean of the University of Washington School of Medicine and his wife of 36 years were remembered yesterday by more than 800 of their colleagues and friends in a ceremony at Meany Hall on the UW campus. A string quartet played music, and friends reminisced.

The Fialkows, both 62, died in an avalanche in the Himalayas while on a month-long journey. Their bodies were found Nov. 3. It was their third trek in the Himalayas.

Dr. Fialkow had been chief academic administrator for the UW Medical Center and Harborview Medical Center since 1992, and school dean since 1990.

A former New Yorker, Dr. Fialkow had been on the school's staff since 1965 and was a renowned researcher in the area of medical genetics. He met his wife at Tufts University School of Medicine, where Helen Dimitrakis studied molecular biology.

Former UW President William Gerberding said yesterday that the couple had a rare and blessed marriage. He recalled how he had to persuade Dr. Fialkow to be dean. He said it was Helen Fialkow who helped persuade her husband to take the position.

It was Dr. Fialkow who later persuaded others to come to the UW. Pathologist Nelson Fausto told how he expressed doubts about leaving Brown University, but Dr. Fialkow won him over. While he was being recruited, Fausto remembered how others described Dr. Fialkow

as a man who carried an "aura of mystery" because he was so intensely private.

The Fialkows are survived by two children, Deborah and Michael.

UW President Richard McCormick called the couple "two good and gentle people." He read from Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay," a poem about living and dying.

"Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay."