HOPE — Hazel Marie Hitson Weidman, Ph.D., 100, died peacefully at her home in Hope, Monday, April 22, 2024.

Born in Taft, California, she was the daughter of Frederick Dhu Hitson and Estell Griesemer Hitson. Along with her four Hitson siblings, Anita, Fred Jr., John D. and Chloe, she was given a great deal of freedom to explore various aspects of the desert region in which they lived.

She spent her early years in California, where she graduated from Taft Union High School in 1941. Following a productive career, she was later inducted into the TUHS Hall of Fame (Inducted in 2011 as “Dr. Hazel Hitson
Weidman – Class of 1941”).

She served in World War II as a US Navy WAVE Instrument Flight Instructor, teaching Navy pilots to fly by instruments, radio navigation, and celestial navigation. Following a 70-year hiatus, she participated in a 2014 Honor Flight visit to Washington D. C., Arlington National Cemetery, and the World War II Memorial. As “Hazel Marie Hitson Weidman”, she is a Charter Member of the Women in Military Service War Memorial. Her “military connections” came into focus again during her 7-year residence at the Coastal Landing Retirement Community in Brunswick. She served as a liaison between Coastal Landing residents who were also veterans and the Mid-Coast Veterans Resource Center. She was honored by the Resource Center in various ways during special Award Ceremonies at their headquarters and during dining services at Coastal Landing.

Under the GI Bill, she graduated cum laude from Northwestern University in 1951, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, with a B.S. degree in Anthropology. Graduate studies followed in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard University, where her required field research in a culture different from her own was conducted over a two-year period in Burma (now Myanmar). Her Radcliffe/Harvard Ph.D. was conferred in 1959.

She was a true pioneer in the, then, newly emergent field of medical anthropology. She taught at the College of William and Mary, the School of Medicine in Birmingham, Alabama, and on both the main and medical campuses of The University of Miami in Florida. Her work at the U of M School of Medicine was seminal in nature. She engaged in health-related, ethnically-oriented basic research, helped design service programs, as well as a variety of transculturally-oriented training programs with health professionals at different levels in their respective fields of specialization. Such activities led to the establishment of a unique Office of Transcultural Education and Research at the School of Medicine in Miami that she directed. She is well published in her field and served as consultant to a wide variety of agencies and organizations. Her work with the Massachusetts Dept. of Public Health led, ultimately, to her marriage to William H. Weidman, M.D., Director of State Hospitals and Tuberculosis Control in that program.

She was instrumental in organizing her field of inquiry within the structure of the American Anthropological Association. Her efforts led to the establishment of an independent society that has flourished. She was honored in 2013 by all the Past Presidents of the Society for Medical Anthropology for her “excellent work in founding “ what is now an international organization with an international journal. This event was later followed by a special award, the “Hazel Weidman Award for Exemplary Service to the Society for Medical Anthropology”. It is presented every two years to a member who has, over the course of a career, demonstrated extraordinary service to the profession. “Our exemplar, Dr. Hazel Weidman, for whom this award is named, was the key organizing force behind the SMA’s emergence as a formal organization.”

Diverse components of her academic life are archived in various locations: early organizational efforts in medical anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution; Burma research materials at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology; and family/military/more personal files at Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. For those who might be interested, a book published in November of 2022, by North Carolina University Press, written by Yale-trained Medical Historian, Catherine Mas, entitled: “Culture in the Clinic: Miami and the Making of Modern Medicine” describes some of the pioneering work that she and her colleagues undertook.

On Hazel’s 100th birthday, August 3, 2023, she received The Military Women’s Memorial Living Legend Certificate. This certificate recognizes military women whose stories of service provide inspiration and examples for all to appreciate. She was also awarded the “Quilt of Valor” from the Quilt of Valor Foundation. The quilt is meant as a thank-you for her service and to offer comfort. Hazel was also presented with the Boston Cane from the town of Hope as the oldest living resident in Hope.

Hazel Weidman was also artistically inclined. Throughout her life, her creativity was periodically expressed in the form of woodcarving, dress design, leatherwork, block prints, watercolor paintings, charcoal drawings, or photography. In one form or another, her work was exceptional and noteworthy.

She was a private person in many ways, but made friends easily, and held many of them close throughout her lifetime. She will be remembered as a caring, bright, gifted, and innovative, woman dedicated to her family, her professional activities, and wide-ranging responsibilities. She was known as something of a “worrier”, however, – and, also, as having a bit of a stubborn streak that carried her through the ups and downs of both the pros and cons of a newly-forged career path.

Hazel Weidman was predeceased by her four siblings, Anita Kirkpatrick Clark, Fred Jr. Hitson, John D. Hitson, and Chloe Hitson Barr; her first-born son, William (“Billy”) Dhu Weidman at the age of 10 ½ months because of an inoperable heart condition; her beloved husband, William H. Weidman, M.D., suddenly, in 1979; and her second-born son, William Brook Weidman, in 2017, tragically, at the age of 54.

She is survived by her talented and caring third-born son, Charles D. Weidman, of Hope and his wife, Theresa Withee, and their children, Shani Dennison, Liana Weidman, and Farin Weidman; also, by three nieces, Karen Kirkpatrick Hofmeister/Kirkpatrick, Leslie Kirkpatrick Wehunt/Merriweather, and Anny Bar Heid; two nephews, Bruce Hitson and Brian Hitson (sons of her older brother, Fred J. Hitson; also, many Hitson cousins located on the West Coast, largely in California and Oregon, but in Nevada, and elsewhere, as well.

Regrettably, she has lost contact with any offspring or descendants of her younger brother, John David Hitson.

A Military Service will be held May 29, 2024, at 9 a.m., followed by interment at the Maine Veterans Memorial Cemetery, 143 Blue Star Hwy. in Augusta, Maine, where her husband’s ashes will accompany hers.

Arrangements are in the care of Burpee, Carpenter & Hutchins Funeral Home, 110 Limerock Street, Rockland.

To share a memory or confluence with Dr. Weidman’s family, please visit their Book of Memories at www.bchfh.com.