Dr. Lester Corn, a long-time Great Neck resident and humanitarian, died last week. He was 87.
Corn, a Brooklyn native who practiced internal medicine at his Bond Street offices for decades and was a former president of the Great Neck Rotary Club, lived according to a mantra of service above self, according to his children Michael and Judy Corn.
“He kind of taught me that what’s important was your work ethic and your dedication,” said Judy. “You do what has to be done and you do it right – that’s what’s important.”
“He was really all about helping other people,” Michael said.
That dedication, which Corn expressed through charitable work with the Rotary Club and his medical practice, grew out of his upbringing in Brooklyn and the loss of his parents to heart disease and cancer, his children said.
Corn was raised in a working class household, with his father working as a union organizer. His mother contended with diabetes and heart disease, and Corn helped care for her throughout his teenage years.
“He nursed his mother for quite some time when he was a teenager,” Judy said.
After graduating from New Utrecht High School, Corn was drafted to serve in World War II and saw action in Italy as a tank driver. When the war was over Corn attended medical school in Switzerland, and was faced with more personal tragedy when his father died of stomach cancer while Corn was overseas.
His son Michael described him as a “wounded healer.”
“I think all these things together gave him a different eye towards medicine,” said his daughter Judy. “Caring for people instead of just the disease.”
“He’s been taking care of people his whole life, and he always took care of me,” said Corn’s wife Bonnie. “They don’t make them like that anymore.”
Corn then moved to Great Neck and opened his medical practice in the early 1960s, from which he treated patients until the late 1990s. Corn was also the first medical director of the Grace Plaza Skilled Nursing Facility and an attending physician at North Shore University Hospital.
Corn and Bonnie met through his medical practice, where they would chat and he would administer her allergy shots. One day Bonnie mustered her courage and asked him out.
“I said to him, I would like to have an appointment with him for Thursday – and this sounds really nervy – I don’t want to be charged for it,” she said.
That first date was like something out of a movie, she said.
“He grabbed me and kissed me,” Bonnie said. “Before the end of the evening he asked me to marry him.”
It was during those early years in Great Neck that Corn began his work with the Rotary Club, which his children and Rotary Club associates described as one of his true passions.
A relative tried to recruit Corn to join the community service society in the early 1970s and was met with some reluctance, Judy said.
“At first my father resisted I think because he didn’t really have time for it,” Judy said.
But join he did, and quickly became deeply involved in a series of charitable campaigns, including vaccination programs and Rotary’s Gift of Life program that saw children from developing countries transported to the United States for life-saving medical care.
Corn put a personal touch on the Gift of Life program, his children said, meeting the children and their families as they entered the United States and collecting donated luggage so the patients could take clothing back home with them.
“He liked the hands on part. He would go to the airport with his Rotarians – Kennedy airport – and he would meet the families,” Judy said.
Dr. Louis Soletsky, a long-time Great Neck Rotary Club member who worked with Corn on those charitable campaigns in the 1970s, described Corn as a caring doctor and a hard-working, principled person.
“He was a Rotarian’s Rotarian would be my view of the situation, and a perfectly lovely gentleman,” Soletsky said. “He will indeed be missed.”
His twin passions, medicine and community service, dominated much of his home life as well, recalled his children.
“He was a great guy. He was a great father. He was very busy with his career,” said Mike. “His career and his life intentions, his humanitarian efforts took up so much of his time.”
Corn’s war service, during which he saw close combat with Axis forces, left a mark on him, said his children.
Michael and Judy said he had told them several harrowing stories of his service, including his capture of a terrified German soldier and navigating his tank through a mine field.
Corn impressed on his children, who both grew up in Great Neck and attended Great Neck North High School, that war was not something to take lightly.
“When I was growing up he never wanted me to play with any kind of war toys, GI Joes and what not,” Michael said.
The war also affected Corn in more benign ways – like in his choice of the family car.
“He said [his tank’s] engine was made by Buick, and from that point on he had nothing but Buick cars for the rest of his life,” Michael said.
Ultimately, it was his dedication to service that his children said would be his legacy.
“He was never in it to make money and he didn’t live his life lavishly,” Judy said. “He was a humble guy.”
Corn died of complications from pneumonia while in palliative care in Manhasset. Funeral services were held Sunday at Riverside-Nassau North Chapels.
