A doctor, scholar and philanthropist who was grateful for every day of his life

BY BILL KIRBY JR. | CityView Senior Columnist

His was a life lived through a lens of curiosity and appreciation for all of God’s creation.

He was a scholar.

He was one of heart with a profound sense of the gift of life.

“Thanks for the good inside of us,” he would write on Thanksgiving 2020. “Thanks for our ability to feel love, compassion and presence of God in us. Thanks for the arts, the humanities, flowers, music and trees. Thanks for poetry, dance, ballet, ballads and symphony, and thanks for science and the universe.

“Thanks for Zarathustra, Buddha, Moses, Abraham of Ur, Jesus of Nazareth, Rumi, Mohammad, Ferdowsi, Avicenna, Shakespeare, Goethe and Gandhi. Thanks for Hanukkah, Easter, Purim and BiShvat, Christmas and Nowruz. Thanks for my own mother, for Mother Teresa, Joan of Arc, Catherine of Siena, Virgin Mary, Sappho, Matilda Maud, Susan B. Anthony and Queen Melisende of Jerusalem.

“Thanks for the gift of time,” he would write. “Time for study, research, introspection, enjoyment, creating, thinking … the list is endless as witnessed by your diversity of intellectual pursuits.”

He was Assad Meymandi, M.D.

Friends called him “Mey.”

“I first met Dr. Meymandi at Highland Presbyterian Church,” Elaine Bryant Hayes says. “We were in the same Sunday school class. He was one of the teachers of the class, and we all enjoyed his lessons. His knowledge of the Bible, of history and the fact that he spoke many different languages was so impressive.”

A native of Kerman, Iran, Dr. Meymandi was the last of nine children born to a father and mother who believed in education and the arts. An ambitious young man, he came to this country in 1955, attended George Washington University and Arizona State University and became a psychiatrist and neurologist who would spend 25 years in Fayetteville as part of the Cape Fear Valley Health System, where he was chief of staff for the medical center on Owen Drive.

He often was a guest columnist for The Fayetteville Observer. He was a radio voice, too, discussing medicine and health and the human condition.

A love for the arts

Dr. Meymandi later would practice in Raleigh, where he also would become an ardent philanthropist and supporter of the North Carolina Symphony and the N.C. Museum of Art, and other charitable causes in anonymity.

“I was also on the N.C. Symphony board when Mey moved from Fayetteville to Raleigh, and because of his love and interest in music he was invited to join that board,” says Hayes, who has been a member of the N.C. Symphony Society board of directors for more than 30 years. “When the city of Raleigh began to plan to make additions to Memorial Auditorium, we were all thrilled to receive that $2 million from him to honor his mother.”

The Meymandi Exhibition Gallery at the N.C. Museum of Art also is named for Dr. Meymandi’s father, Farajollah Meymandi, who was a physician.

Dr. Meymandi welcomed every opportunity to invite friends on handwritten invitations to join him in his private balcony box for a N.C. Symphony concert. He would treat them to hors d’oeuvres and cocktails and conversation before settling in for a performance, where Dr. Meymandi followed every symphony movement with a passion.

“He was a very interesting person, kind and caring,” Hayes says. “He loved his friends, and he often invited us to have dinner before the symphony concerts, and even asked us to sit in his box sometimes.”

Dwain Joyce remembers invitations to sit in the balcony box overlooking the orchestra.

“Dr. Meymandi was a kind, caring, generous and an interesting person,” says Joyce, who has served as a trustee on the NCS board of directors since 2016. “I had the pleasure of being invited to sit with him in his box seats at a concert — an example of his kindness and generosity.”

Meymandi Concert Hall, named for his late mother, Kobra Meymandi, at the Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts is home for the N.C. Symphony.

“He played a pivotal role in the symphony’s life, not only in providing the city of Raleigh with funds to develop Meymandi Concert Hall, but also in watching over his beloved orchestra at each Friday and Saturday performance since the hall opened in 2001,” says Sandi Macdonald, president and chief executive officer for the symphony. “His desire to share his passion for the arts was evident as oftentimes he would invite community leaders to join him in experiencing the power of live orchestral music.”

‘We will miss him immensely’

Today, there’s a pall over Meymandi Concert Hall.

Assad Meymandi, M.D., died May 10, one day shy of his 90^th birthday.

“I already miss him being in his box at the concerts but will never forget his kind spirit and his generosity to the arts, for education and for charities that help those that are less fortunate,” Hayes says. He was a great man.”

A service for Dr. Meymandi is scheduled for 2 p.m. on May 23 at Christ Episcopal Church, E. Edenton St., in Raleigh.

“We will miss him immensely,” Macdonald says, “and will honor his memory at a performance in the fall.”

Epilogue

Dr. Assad Meymandi saw life for what it was, but also for what it could and what it should be for the betterment of humankind.

He knew the perils of those suffering with mental illness. He personally knew the struggles of those afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease, and treated and nurtured his late wife, Emily Burrage Welles Meymandi, when she was diagnosed. He cared for her, for as long as he could, rather than place her in a care facility. Emily Meymandi died Nov. 29, 2016.

“Alzheimer’s disease is a heart-breaker,” Dr. Meymandi wrote in 2017. “Alzheimer’s disease is brutal. It robs the afflicted of experiencing joy, communication and connection with life.”

His was a life through a lens of curiosity and appreciation for all of God’s creation. He was one of heart with a profound sense of the gift of life, and life’s gifts and one to always say, “I love you” to those who came to know him.

“Weep not for me,” Dr. Assad Meymani would want us to know. “I love you.”

For those of us who came to know him, we are blessed Dr. Assad Meymandi passed our way, and once called Fayetteville home.

Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at billkirby49@gmail.com or 910-624-1961.

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