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ROBERT W. FRELICK, MD, FACP
Nicholas J. Petrelli, M.D., FACS
Robert Westscott “Dr. Bob” Frelick, MD, FACP, died September 1, 2016 at the Compassionate Care Unit of Saint Francis Hospital in Wilmington, Del. He passed away
peacefully in his sleep after an accident and short illness. Born in 1920, in Potsdam, NY, son of the late Rev. Harry Victor Frelick and Ruth Scott Frelick, he was a graduate of Union College, Schenectady, NY. He received his medical degree from Yale in the history, expansion, and improvement of cancer care and treatment in Delaware and southern New Jersey starting in 1950 Clinic, part of what was then Memorial Hospital in Wilmington. Having played a key role in the 1997 merger of Memorial Hospital, Wilmington General Hospital, and Delaware Hospital into Christiana Care Health System (CCHS), he considered the establishment of the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center at CCHS
to be among his major achievements. Dr. Bob was a skilled diagnostician and dedicated medical practitioner, providing medical advice and assistance to family and friends into his 90s.
He joined the U.S. Army Reserve in 1942, rising to the rank of captain. After marrying Jane Owen Hayden in 1944 and serving a medical internship at New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, he Madigan General Hospital in Fort Lewis, Wash., and then to the Army of Occupation in Munich, Germany.
Returning to civilian life in 1947, he and his family relocated
to Wilmington, Del., where he was assistant medical resident
and then chief resident at Memorial Hospital until 1949. He Diseases (now Sloan- Kettering Cancer Center) in New York City from 1949 to 1950.
The son of a Presbyterian minister, he was a lifelong member of that denomination. He was a founding member of Concord Presbyterian Church and later an active participant in the life of Wilmington’s Westminster Presbyterian Church, where he
served as a deacon from 1996 to 1998. He considered his religious and church-related activities, along with family, to be the most important aspects of his life outside of his profession.
Medicine in 1952, the American Board of Nuclear Medicine in 1972, and the American Board of Medical Oncology in 1979. During the early part of his practice, Dr. Frelick was awarded two fellowships: the 1956 A. Blaine Brower Traveling Fellowship through the American College of Physicians; and a 1967 Squibb Fellowship at the Memorial Cancer Center in New York City.
In private practice from 1950 to 1982, he served as primary care physician for many in northern Wilmington. In addition, he served as the director of the Department of Nuclear Medicine and Laboratory from 1952-1970, and of the Department of Medicine from 1966 to 1972 at the Wilmington Medical Center. Beginning in 1968, he served as a medical oncology consultant for hospitals in down-state Delaware and lower New Jersey. Into his 90s he was an active member of the Cancer Committees of Christiana Care Health System, South Jersey Hospital System, A.I. duPont Hospital for Children (Wilmington), and Saint Francis Hospital (Wilmington).
From 1952 to 1982, he served as consultant physician and, from 1967 to 1979, director of employee medical services for Atlas Chemical Industries Inc., headquartered in Wilmington, which became ICI America (now Astra Zeneca).
In 1982 he left his private practice and became program
director for the Community Clinical Oncology Program
(CCOP) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He helped establish the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC), which facilitated community hospital’s use of proven protocols for treating various forms of cancer, thereby allowing cancer patients to stay closer to home and the collection of research data from outside of big medical centers. While at NCI, he also represented
NIH at the Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons and served as consultant to a number of hospital cancer programs, including those at I.E. Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, Penn.; Aultman Hospital in Canton, Ohio; the South Jersey Hospital Consortium; and Methodist Hospital, Houston, Texas.
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