Dr. George Lazarus, an extraordinary pediatrician and professor who held faculty appointments at both of NewYork-Presbyterian’s affiliated medical schools, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Weill Cornell Medicine, passed away in 2025.
George was beloved by all who knew him. And he had a deep passion for pediatrics. “He found kids charming and intelligent beyond their years,” said his wife, Shelly Lazarus, an NYP Board of Trustees Vice-Chair.
For George’s 60th birthday, knowing that philanthropy was the gift he appreciated most, Shelly arranged a naming at NYP Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital. “He especially loved when people said to him, ‘My daughter just had a baby in your nursery,’” she said.
“We got so much pleasure from our first gift to the nurseries that we wanted to do something more,” said Shelly, and so they generously gave again, to renovate operating rooms at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, where surgeons pioneer life-saving procedures.
George’s heart was big enough to make everyone who surrounded him feel special. “He adored his patients, but his commitment to his three children, seven grandchildren, and wife, Shelly, always came first.” They were his whole world.
George also made it a priority to mentor and bring up the next generation of doctors who embodied what he loved about practicing medicine. Pediatrician Anne Armstrong-Coben first met George as a pediatric intern at the (then) Babies Hospital in 1989. “My biggest lessons learned from him were advocacy for and passionate commitment to patients,” she said. “Families and patients adored him in a unique way with a depth of respect and love that was inspiring.”
When Dr. Armstrong-Coben became Dean for Admissions at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, George continued to support her. “He was so dedicated to the mission of finding humanistic future doctors and had a knack for connecting with stressed-out applicants during interviews and putting them at ease,” she said.
It wasn’t just stressed-out future doctors whose minds George regularly put at ease. Every morning, George set aside an hour for calls from parents in search of answers about their kids. And he got plenty. “He’d get a call from someone who would say, ‘I don’t know if you remember me; now I’m the grandmother, and my daughter has left her kids with me, and I was hoping you still had your telephone hour,’” said Shelly. They all knew George would know what to do.
He maintained that morning phone hour “to the end,” Shelly said. And he knew he had to answer by 7:30 so that parents could know whether to send their kids to school that day. At George’s memorial, Benjamin Lazarus recalled those phone conversations at the breakfast table and his dad’s “magic power to reassure.”
“At 7:30, he would come in, already in a suit and tie, and he would start taking calls from all of you,” said Benjamin. “And he would tell you the answer, more often than not, was Pedialyte.”
