Robert Camber, Old-Fashioned Physician Who Made House Calls

Dr. Robert L. Camber practiced medicine the old-fashioned way.

He carried a black bag. He made house calls.

"I remember when I was a kid, he'd have to go out on house calls almost every night just as he was sitting down to dinner," his son, David Camber of Seattle, recalled. "He would leave, and his dinner would go back into the oven."

He even mounted spotlights on his car so he could find house numbers on dark country roads.

"Our family outings were usually arranged around house calls," said his daughter, Frances Camber of Seattle. "We'd always be making stops. We'd sit out in the car for an hour while he was inside, seeing someone."

Dr. Camber, a Seattle physician for nearly 50 years, died last Monday (Jan. 26) after a short illness. He was 80.

As medicine became increasingly specialized, Dr. Camber emerged as a leading advocate for family practice, said another son, Kenneth Camber of Salem, Ore. He said his father played a part in getting general practice recognized by the medical community as a specialty in itself.

Dr. Camber was born in Portland. His father, a Scottish immigrant, was an import dealer, his mother a store clerk. He put himself through Reed College and the University of Oregon Medical School by working in a grocery store.

"My father really pulled himself up by his own bootstraps," Kenneth Camber said.

At Reed, he met Kay, his wife of 57 years. She died in 1996.

Dr. Camber served in the Army during World War II, working as a medical officer in India and Burma and attaining the rank of major.

The Cambers moved to Seattle after the war. Dr. Camber's first office was in what is now the Wilsonian Apartments at University Way Northeast and Northeast 47th Street. Later he moved to an office on 25th Avenue Northeast near University Village, where he practiced until retirement.

He served a term as president of the King County Academy of General Practice in 1965-66.

Dr. Camber's patients moved all over the region, but remained loyal. "He had twinkling blue eyes and snow-white hair and a grin that would light up a room," David Camber said. "His patients knew he really cared for them."

Dr. Camber arose at 6 every morning to visit hospitalized patients. "He practiced so long that he was delivering babies of babies of babies he'd delivered," David Camber said, "and he loved that."

Frances Camber said she still encounters people who recognize her name and tell her Dr. Camber brought them into the world.

But, after his wife, it's hard to say whether medicine or sailing was the second-greatest passion of Dr. Camber's life, Kenneth Camber said.

His first vessel was a 16-foot power boat. Eventually he graduated to a 45-foot sailboat, which he and his wife sailed in the San Juan Islands every summer. "That was the love of his life," David Camber said.

He was a lifetime member of the Seattle Yacht Club, and was active in Rotary.

After Dr. Camber retired five or six years ago, he and his wife moved from Northeast Seattle to the Emerald Heights retirement community in Redmond.

Survivors, in addition to sons David and Kenneth and daughter Frances Camber, include daughter Susan Steffens of Benicia, Calif., and two grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday in the Emerald Room at Emerald Heights, 10901 176th Circle N.E., Redmond.