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Dr. Bob Spence, reconstructive surgeon who specialized in burn victims, dies

Dr. Bob Spence, a reconstructive surgeon who specialized in burn victims, died of mesothelioma Aug. 9 at home in Cambridge. He was 77.

Robert James Spence was born in 1947 in Albany, New York, to James Robert Spence, a high school principal and later a college admissions administrator, and Ruth Spence, a home-visit nurse. The middle of three brothers, Dr. Spence was set as a teenager on attending the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

He graduated from Bethlehem Central High School in Delmar, New York, in 1965 and enrolled in a combined bachelor’s and medical school program at Hopkins. At 6 feet 3, he also played basketball for the Blue Jays.

“He wanted to be a surgeon. He was a good athlete and basketball player, and he used his hands very well,” Courtney Spence Omary, a daughter, said. “I don’t want to say this in a bad way. He really loved being a perfectionist, and in reconstructive surgery, he knew he could improve a patient’s quality of life by perfecting the technique and perfecting the treatment.”

While home from school on winter break, he asked Cressy Starkweather, whom he had a crush on since middle school per family legend, to dinner and a movie and later to bake chocolate chip cookies.

The two married in Albany in 1971. He graduated from medical school in 1972 and stayed in the area in a residence program for general surgery and plastic surgery.

“It was the people he met that really kept him in Baltimore,” his daughter said.

The Spences moved to the Original Northwood neighborhood and were within walking distance and earshot of Memorial Stadium. They had season tickets to the Orioles.

From 1980 to 1985 he taught plastic and reconstructive surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine before becoming chief of plastic surgery and the burn unit at Bayview Medical Center, a part of Hopkins. In 2008, he founded the National Burn Reconstruction Center at MedStar Good Samaritan Hospital. While practicing in Maryland, Dr. Spence frequently flew to an Army hospital in Texas to work with burn victims.

“You just knew from his career once he got going that he would be challenging himself, and he did very difficult procedures,” said Dr. J. Raymond DePaulo, a psychiatrist who knew Dr. Spence in medical school. “He was very conscientious of the way he was helping people, not just physically but psychologically.”

Dr. DePaulo said Dr. Spence often argued with insurance companies who tried to deny plastic surgeries as purely cosmetic.

Dr. Spence also co-founded the Maryland Tissue Bank, was a medical director for the Transplant Resource Center in Maryland, and served as a mentor.

“I still remember many of the tips he taught me as a resident and young faculty member — how to sew the perfect bolster, how to choose the donor site, how to cut out a lesion in a sensitive area, how to treat patients with the utmost respect and compassion,” said Lesley Wong, a program director and professor of plastic surgery at the University of Kentucky. “I try to pass these on to my residents.”

Outside the hospital, Dr. Spence was happiest on the Choptank River near his house in Cambridge.

He is survived by his wife, Cressy Spence, of Cambridge; daughters Courtney Spence Omary, of Augusta, Georgia, and Erin Spence, of Rockford, Illinois; son Kevin Spence, of Millersville; younger brother, Paul Spence, of Lutherville; older brother, Dave Spence, of Atlanta; and seven grandchildren.

“Just a humble and decent guy who was so accomplished and medically and personally meant so much to so many,” his brother Paul said.