Dr. Russell S. Hoxsie, a widely respected and much-loved family doctor who practiced medicine on the Vineyard for more than four decades, died peacefully on July 30 at the Life Care Center in Wilbraham where he had been living. He was 83.

The youngest of a group of five physicians, who beginning in the 1950s ran private practices from their homes and shared privileges at what was then the Martha’s Vineyard Cottage Hospital, Dr. Hoxsie’s career spanned an era of family medicine that saw explosive changes from the middle 1950s through the late 1990s. In the tradition of many doctors of his era, he also was deeply involved in the development side of the hospital, serving on the board of directors for many years and presiding over much change, including the construction of a new hospital, a nursing home — and in the middle a bankruptcy and subsequent financial rescue.

Through it all, Russ Hoxsie was a quietly wise, guiding hand, always acting in the best interest of the people he and the hospital served: their patients.

His medical credentials were peerless; among other things he pioneered the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease. Well before it was known whether the organism that caused the disease was bacterial or viral, Dr. Hoxsie was treating his Lyme patients with penicillin and finding good results. (It is now well-known that Lyme is bacterial and today tetracyclines are used in treatment.)

He was also a writer and a poet. His writing was informed by his experiences with his patients and by nature; he loved the outdoors and in later years became an inveterate walker with his devoted springer spaniel, Lilly, who was the subject of a book.

Russell Sherman Hoxsie was born in Providence, R.I., on Sept. 2, 1927, the son of Nelson C. and Effie (Machon) Hoxsie.

He grew up in New Bedford and Padanarum until his teen years when his family moved to Wellesley. He graduated from the Wellesley High School and then enrolled at Wesleyan University where he majored in pre-med. He received his medical degree from Cornell University in 1952. He did his internship and residency at Providence Hospital and the Boston Veterans Administration Hospital.

He served in the U.S. Army from 1947 through 1948 and was stationed in Albuquerque, N.M.

In 1949 he married Mary Ann Hollister of Wellesley, whom he had met in high school. She had grown up spending summers on Cape Cod and his own family had summered in Padanarum, so in 1955 when they learned of the need for a private family practice in Vineyard Haven, the move seemed a natural choice. They bought the Billings house on William street in Vineyard Haven and Dr. Hoxsie set up his practice there. “Being a country doctor is very satisfying,” he said in a 1993 interview with the Martha’s Vineyard Magazine. “You earn a special place in the community, but people are doubly aware of any mistakes and there is a loss of confidentiality, but you learn to wear that hat. You cry with your patients and you laugh with them.”

The Hoxsies had five children and were active in the Vineyard community. In addition to his busy family practice which knew no time clock, Dr. Hoxsie served on the regional high school district school committee in the early 1960s and the Tisbury board of health. In 1976 the Hoxsies moved year-round to Menemsha.

Trim and bespectacled, quietly thoughtful, Dr. Hoxsie delivered hundreds of babies and treated hundreds more Islanders for everything from common colds to terminal cancer. And he watched the medical profession change all around him. In a 1987 interview with the Gazette he reflected on some of those changes, including the maze of paperwork and insurance red tape that had begun to drive so much of the medical profession.

“In some ways I feel I was lucky to be able to live out my dream of being a general practitioner in a small community. And I’m sorry to say I don’t think others will be able to do the same,” he said. “Things have just changed too much. Medicine is such an important part of my life . . . It’s essential to me to have a personal interest in the patients and treat them as persons, not as cases. And have the responsibility to worry about them and maybe lose sleep over them.”

He also praised the rapid advances in medicine that took place during his career.

“People’s lives are being prolonged — all those good things that I think every American takes for granted [that] make life better in the United States in 1987 than it was it 1957,” he said in the 1987 interview.

In addition to his private practice, he was medical examiner, emergency room physician and chief of staff at the hospital at various times. He routinely traveled to Boston area hospitals to make rounds for his Vineyard patients. He set up the first cardiac acute care unit on the Vineyard.

He loved gardening, bee-keeping and was a voracious reader. A longtime and active member of Grace Episcopal Church in Vineyard Haven, he sang in the church choir as well as in the Island Community Chorus.

In 1992 he retired from private practice. From 1994 to 1997 he served as medical director of Windemere, which began as a long-term care wing in the hospital before the nursing home was built. (A 1990 essay Dr. Hoxsie wrote for the Gazette about his patients in long-term care is reprinted on the Commentary Page in today’s edition.)

He and his wife suffered the personal tragedy of losing a daughter at the young age of 27.

And he lived through a painful period in the late 1990s when the hospital and Windemere were forced to declare bankruptcy due to a financial crisis that nearly sank the two institutions. Dr. Hoxsie was a steady hand at the tiller and a diplomatic voice of reason during those tumultuous years.

Addressing the Island selectmen in 1996 at the peak of the crisis, he said: “I hope you will agree with me that this is the time for all reasonable and thoughtful minds to come together to mend the pain . . . for the hospital’s future we need your help. We don’t need bricks thrown.”

Both institutions later emerged from the bankruptcies and are thriving today.

In 2006 Dr. Hoxsie was awarded the Ruth Bogan Creative Living Award, a prestigious Island award that honors a person each year who embodies the Vineyard spirit of living. West Tisbury poet Dan Waters wrote a toast for the occasion:

It’s obvious our Island loves

This poet with the rubber gloves,

This doctor with the hearty laugh

Who’s done so much on our behalf.

The lives he’s touched are many-fold,

In generations young and old;

So, green or grizzled, plain or foxy

We raise this toast to Russell Hoxsie!

In an interview in the Gazette that year Dr. Hoxsie recalled his first day on the Island. “I walked out on the street in the middle of September, the first morning I was here, to scout out Main street — and there was nobody on the street . . . and I thought, whoa, I’m not going to be able to make a living down here.”

In addition to his wife of 62 years, he is survived by his daughter, Deborah Lomas, and her husband, Duncan, of Wilbraham; sons Steven Hoxsie and his wife, Martha, of Scarborough, Me., Russell S. Hoxsie Jr., and Christopher Hoxsie, both of the Vineyard. He also leaves his six grandchildren, Conor and Corey Lomas of Wilbraham, Alex and Trevor Hoxsie of Scarborough, Me., Hannah Perceval and her husband, Thomas, of South Portland, Me., and Gabriella Hoxsie as well as her mother, Pamela (Snow) Hoxsie, of Edgartown. Additionally, a sister, Joan Bell, and her husband, William, of Alexandria, N.H. and sister in law, Sylvia Hoxsie, of Kairo, N.Y., survive him. Besides his parents, he was predeceased by his daughter Pamela and his brother, Donald.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday, August 13, at 1 p.m. at Grace Episcopal Church in Vineyard Haven.

At the family’s request donations may be made in his memory to the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, P.O. Box 1477, Oak Bluffs, MA 02557. For online guest book and more information please visit beersandstory.com.