Dr. Sandor H. Shoichet, a resident of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, died on June 12th, 2025 at the age of 73. Funeral services arranged by The Dorfman Chapel.
or to The Sandor H. Shoichet, M.D. Internal Medicine Fund
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He died June 12 in the hospital where he made some of his closest friends and shaped the lives of generations of students. He was 73.
Sandor Herman Shoichet was born January 20, 1952, in Flint, Michigan. His father, David, owned a small grocery store there. His mother, Celia, was a seamstress. Both parents were immigrants from Eastern Europe – a fact that Sandy was proud of and never forgot.
Sandy’s early years listening to baseball on the radio with his brothers, Frank and Leslie, paved the way for a stint as sports editor of his high school newspaper at Flint Northern and a lifelong love of watching his favorite teams play.
He went on to study at the University of Michigan, where he graduated with a degree in psychology in 1974. He adored those years in Ann Arbor – especially after he met the love of his life, Mary Zobel, when they had summer jobs in the same department at the University of Michigan Hospital. On one date night, he sang Paul Simon’s “Song for the Asking” to her as they walked home over a bridge.
They married in 1976, while he was in medical school at Wayne State University and she worked in the science library there. They moved to the Chicago area in 1979, when Sandy started his internal medicine residency at Northwestern, and their daughter, Catherine, was born in 1982, just days into Sandy’s stint as chief resident.
In 1988, Sandy’s former medical school professor, Dr. Carl Lauter, recruited him back to Michigan for a job at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak. There he became the director of ambulatory care and eventually the program director of the Internal Medicine residency, where his great pride and joy was teaching students the values and skills he knew would make them great doctors.
Sandy also saw patients in a small private practice. He gave many of them his cell phone number and fielded calls and texts at all hours to help them.
Even when facing his own medical challenges, his patients always came first.
One morning in 2011, Sandy rushed to pick up the phone and deliver anxiously awaited test results to a patient. He didn’t mention he was calling from a hospital bed, the day after suffering a heart attack.
One night in 2020, he took the time to discuss organ transplant options with a patient who urgently needed his advice. It was only at the end of the call that he revealed in passing that he was on the way to the ER himself after a fall.
Through it all and on top of many long hours at work, Sandy was the most supportive husband, father and grandfather anyone could ever be lucky enough to have. His stories about his daughter, Catherine, and granddaughter, Leah, were legendary throughout the halls of Beaumont. And whenever he talked about them, he beamed with pride.
Mary’s death in 2022 was devastating beyond measure. But rather than shutting down with grief, Sandy did all he could to reach out. In the evenings, he became a regular fixture at The Gallery, where he loved meeting up with old friends and forging new friendships with the restaurant’s staff. On the weekends, phone calls with his brothers became a treasured routine. And he’d FaceTime with Leah every night.
He often told her stories about his day at work. And even to a toddler, his love for what he did was so infectious that it wasn’t long before Leah started telling people she wanted to become a “doctor-teacher” just like her grandpa. That thrilled him.
Just a few days before he died, they ate at The Gallery and watched Encanto together, and he gave her a set of stethoscope stickers.
Sandy hated hypocrisy, dishonesty and greed. And he never shied away from speaking truth to power or fighting for what he believed was right.
Sandy was a devout fan of the Tigers, the Pistons and Michigan Football. And he loved discussing games with fellow fans – whether they were strangers he’d just met or close friends he’d text while watching ESPN. He also loved the music of Motown, Carole King and Paul Simon, and more recently had discovered Rhiannon Giddens and loved seeing her in concert. Every summer, he traveled to Canada for the Stratford Festival, a beloved vacation destination for his family and dear friends for more than 30 years.
Sandy’s family is grateful for the outpouring of love and support we’ve received from his friends, former residents, patients and colleagues since his death. We are heartbroken to contemplate our lives without him, but sustained by the beautiful memories you’ve shared.
Among the most powerful -- the week before he died, Sandy printed out and chatted with a friend about how much he loved this quote from playwright George Bernard Shaw:
“I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and that as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me, it is a sort of splendid torch which I've got a hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
May we all continue to carry the torch.
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