Was Harvard’s town doctor
Dr. Charles Clark Streeter, 90, of Hingham, who was Harvard’s town doctor in the late 1940s, died late Saturday, April 11, 2009, Easter eve. Dr. Streeter practiced medicine in Harvard for several years after World War II in the house behind the old library.
Born in Gallup, N.M., in 1918, Clark Streeter was the son of Harley Hall Streeter and his wife, Helen, and the elder brother of Janet Streeter Fowke of Ayer Road. As children, he and Janet spent many happy summers at their grandparents’ cottage on Sheep Island in Bare Hill Pond.
He attended Tufts Medical School on a scholarship that required him to practice for two years in a town with fewer than 3,000 residents, so after serving in Okinawa during the war, he came back to take on the duties of Harvard’s town doctor. After contracting tuberculosis from a patient, however, he was unable to continue in private practice, and became a patient himself at a TB hospital in Grafton. He later returned to the practice of medicine, and was the administrator of Plymouth County Hospital in Hanson for many years before his retirement.
Clark Streeter is predeceased by his wife, Ruth Knipes Streeter, and is survived by his children Laurel McAvoy and Dr. John McAvoy of Santa Rosa, Calif.; Charles C. Streeter Jr. and his wife, Maureen, of Canton; Virginia and Edward Hamilton of Needham; their families; and by his sister Janet Fowke and her family.
