Necrology

Arthur Holmes Applegate '41

Jan. 2, 1919-Nov. 21, 2009

Arthur Holmes Applegate ’41, who practiced medicine in Ilion, NY, for 30 years, was born on January 2, 1919, in Deansboro, not far from College Hill. The son of Robert D., a contractor, and Julia Alnetta Calhoun Applegate, he grew up in Ilion, near Utica, and was graduated from Ilion High School. Art Applegate enrolled at Hamilton in 1937, joined Tau Kappa Epsilon, and sang in the Choir. Thinking of a future career in the classroom, he changed his mind following “the humbling experience” of practice teaching at Proctor High School in Utica.

Art Applegate, who left the Hill with his diploma in 1941, was working for Remington Arms in Ilion when called into military service in 1942. Assigned to the Army Air Corps and later the Infantry, he was selected, because of his “rudimentary ability in French and German acquired at Hamilton,” for the Army's Counterintelligence Corps. Attached to a military intelligence team in Europe, he served in France, Belgium, and Germany, and was awarded the Bronze Star. He was discharged as a technical sergeant at World War II's end in 1945.

With further study made possible by the G.I. Bill, Art Applegate decided on a career in medicine. He returned to College Hill to take premedical courses for 18 months until 1947, when he was admitted to the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. On June 25, 1949, while a medical student, he was married in Frankfort, NY, to Betty Jane Weed-en, sister of G. Roger Weeden, Jr. ’39 and Willis F. Weeden ’41.

After acquiring his M.D. degree in 1951, Art Applegate served his internship at Vanderbilt University Hospital in Nashville, TN, and his residency at Strong Memorial Hospital back in Rochester. His postgraduate training completed, he returned to Ilion and established his practice in partnership with Roger Weeden, his brother-in-law, in 1954. During their 30-year partnership, they had as patients “the tall and the small, the rich and the poor,” and they shared in their “joys and sorrows, successes and failures, illness and times of good health, birth and death.” Dr. Applegate considered that sharing to be “a real privilege,” and he thoroughly enjoyed the day-to-day challenges of medical practice.

During his years of practice, Art Applegate, a past president of the Central New York Academy of Medicine, was involved in various ways in his community. A onetime member of the Ilion Central School Board and president of the Ilion Conversation Club, he had also been secretary of the Ilion Water Commission and a vestryman of St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church.

Art Applegate’s leisure-time activities encompassed reading, gardening, basket weaving, and needlepoint work, as well as music. An accomplished organist and pianist, he also loved to sing. After his retirement in 1984, and when not “rattling around in our 1830 Federalist home,” their longtime residence in Ilion, he and Betty enjoyed exposure to other places and cultures through travel.

Arthur H. Applegate, a devoted alumnus, died on November 21, 2009, in Granville, OH, in his 91st year. Predeceased by his wife in 2004, he is survived by two sons, Stephen H. ’74 and Robert W. Applegate ’75; a daughter, Mary H. Boyd; and 10 grandchildren.

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