Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

City People

Jack of all trades,master of the saw

Dr. Al Felman has mastered many pursuits from radiology to polo to sailing to writing and teaching to many musical instruments including an odd and esoteric one - the saw.

By AMY SCHERZER
Published June 23, 2006

[Times photo: Chris Zuppa]

Al Felman, M.D., in his Tampa home with his saw and bow. Felman has been playing the saw for nearly a year and just recorded a CD. Go to video See You In My Dreams (MP3)

The sight of Al Felman with a saw between his knees and bow in his hand used to send his wife running out of the room.

"I couldn't stand it," said Lynne, his sidekick for nearly 50 years. Her ears hurt so much

she sought treatment from an ear, nose and throat specialist. The doctor's orders: Close the door when your husband plays the saw.

Today she's not cringing. What happened?

"He got good at it," she said of the retired doctor.

Felman's interests roam from polo, sailing and tennis to writing and playing the banjo and ukulele. He

mastered his latest passion, the musical saw, with nine months of dogged practice.

"Listen to this," says Felman, 77, reading from a review to be printed in the Musical Saw Association newsletter. "Beautiful tone and fine musicianship. ... In tune and precise."

He's tickled to have Banjo Hall of Famer Tim Allan accompany his slightly eerie, whistling saw sounds on his self-produced CD, Sawdust Melodies. Felman croons along on six tracks, including old standards Somebody Stole My Gal and I Left My Heart In San Francisco.

Felman first heard the saw played in Blowing Rock, N.C., where he and Lynne have spent their summers since he retired from the University of South Florida radiology department. He strums the banjo and Lynne turns into "Washboard Mama" whenever they find a jam session to join.

In the 1970s, when he was a professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine, he played banjo with the Docs of Dixieland.

"They broke the mold when they made him," said his son, David Felman, a partner with the law firm Hill, Ward and Henderson in Tampa.

"He played polo into his 50s and wrote some very good books in his 70s. Medicine and family came first, but he always had hobbies that allowed him to get away from work. He's a wonderful example for his three boys.''

He self-published the book, From the Ends of the Earth, about seven years ago.

"I wanted to write my life story, but Lynne thought it was boring so I made up some more characters," Felman said. The Irving Rodgers character, his alter ego, runs a ranch in Montana while the Allen Felder character follows Felman's career path.

The parallel stories let him ponder what might have been, because, as Felman writes, "History doesn't reveal its alternatives.''

His real-life story begins in Cincinnati, where he was born to a fruit peddler and a mother with mental illness. Chores on the family farm in Goshen, Ohio, triggered a lifelong affection for horses. Family lore has it that later in life, when his wife and his horse fell ill, he went to the barn first.

Working in a pharmacy at age 12 sparked his medical career. Felman attended the University of Cincinnati and waited tables during the summer in the Catskill Mountains, where he earned money for medical school and perfected his Yiddish.

His hard work paid off. In 1955, Felman graduated fourth in his class at UC's College of Medicine.

A year later, he met "my ever-lovin' wife" when he was an intern at Philadelphia General Hospital. She worked as a physical therapist at the adjacent Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

"My roommate set us up on a blind date to go to his engagement party,'' he said. After a six-week courtship, "we got married, and he didn't."

After two years in the military at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, Felman practiced pediatrics in Media, Pa., for six years and got hooked on polo.

"We didn't have any furniture, but we had a horse," he said. "My mother-in-law was kind of mad about that.''

He draws on the Philadelphia-area Brandywine Polo Club in his novel The Measure of Our Torment, the first of a trilogy based on his real-life experiences. A Better Man Than I and Legend of the Feather Pillow followed. They are available online and at local bookstores.

"My books have always been No. 1 on the worst-seller list," Felman jokes.

At age 40, he returned to Philadelphia General to retrain as a radiologist. A job as professor of pediatric radiology at the UF College of Medicine from 1969 to 1982 moved the family to a 40-acre farm, where he started the Gainesville Polo Club.

The Felmans sold the farm when he transferred to UF's Jacksonville campus as chief of the radiology residency program.

They stored their belongings and lived on a 41-foot sailboat for a few years.

"The kids thought we were nuts," Lynne said.

The couple moved to Brandon in 1992 to be closer to their sons in Tampa and in Venice, plus polo in Plant City and Sarasota. Felman joined the University of South Florida's radiology department.

Felman retired a few years later and hung up his mallets. "I was playing against grandchildren of guys I used to play with," he said.

The couple sold the horses and moved to a condominium in the Monte Carlo Towers on Bayshore Boulevard. Plenty of other interests replaced polo.

He teaches boating safety for the U.S. Coast Guard, gives tours of the American Victory Marines Memorial & Museum Ship and consults on child and elderly abuse cases for the Florida Department of Children and Families.

He and Lynne volunteer backstage for the Florida Orchestra, sing in their synagogue choir and play background roles in Opera Tampa productions.

And don't forget the saw. For that, he's always on call.

Amy Scherzer can be reached at ascherzer@sptimes.com or 813 226-3332.

[Last modified June 22, 2006, 12:06:19]