November 8, 1937 – September 6, 2025
Dr. Robert Waldemar Putsch III, beloved husband, father, grandfather, physician, and storyteller, passed away peacefully at his home in Canyon Creek, Montana, on September 6, 2025, surrounded by family. Remarkably, his death came exactly five years to the day after his cherished wife of 60 years, Rosamond “Poo” Dana Putsch.
Born on November 8, 1937, in Arlington, Massachusetts, to Robert W. Putsch Jr. and Ruth Putsch, he grew up on the East Coast before attending Yale University, where he earned his undergraduate degree and competed on both the tennis and swim teams. He achieved his medical degree at the University of Colorado, followed by residency in Cleveland, OH.
A lifelong servant of others, Dr. Putsch began his career in the U.S. Public Health Service as a medical officer in the Reserve Corps. He and his young family spent several formative years on the Navajo reservation in Shiprock, New Mexico, where he developed a passion for cross-cultural medicine. This experience sparked a lifelong commitment to honoring cultural backgrounds in healing. As he wrote, “everything we do is, at one level or another, bound to culture. It only makes sense that a patient will respond to a therapy that takes his or her own cultural background into account.”
Dr. Putsch carried this conviction into decades of work with the Indian Health Service, with Asian refugee communities in Seattle, and as a founding member and senior advisor to Seattle’s Cross-Cultural Health Care Program. He also served as a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine, where he helped pioneer interpreter training and cultural competency curricula. His research and writing addressed inequities in health care, institutional racism, ethical dilemmas across cultures, and the importance of communication in medicine. His numerous publications—including on ghost illness, cross-cultural communication, and ethical dilemmas in care—continue to shape the field today.
While dedicated to his professional calling, Dr. Putsch’s proudest role was as a family man. He and Poo raised five children—Jeff, Alison, Jon, Molly, and David—in Parker, Colorado, and Mercer Island, Washington, before eventually settling in Montana. He was a devoted father and a doting grandfather to nine grandchildren: Daria, Cassie, Kristin, Cobey, Derek, Lydia, Kai, Jameson, and Louis.
Beyond medicine, he was a rancher, fisherman, singer, and raconteur. A gifted storyteller with a love for puns and a sharp wit, he had a song for every occasion—often funny or obscure—and filled his children’s and grandchildren’s memories with bedtime melodies.
He nurtured friendships across the globe, bridging divides with humor, warmth, and respect. His legacy endures not only in the countless patients, students, and colleagues he influenced, but also in the enduring values of justice, fairness, healing, and joyful storytelling that he instilled in his family and community.
He is survived by his children and grandchildren, and by the countless people whose lives he touched.
A celebration of life will be held at a later date in Canyon Creek, Montana. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations be made to charities he believed in and regularly contributed to including Northfield Mount Herman School, Public Broadcasting Service, Doctors without Borders or your local food bank.