Dr. Dave

Longtime friend Barry has been a pretty tough kid ever since I've known him. And how he described his dad's death this week kind of told me where he got that from.

Dr. David Schwartz, sometimes mistaken for legendary college basketball coach Dean Smith, died Tuesday in a Cincinnati hospital.

My own dad died in 1992, and I spent too much time after that working in restaurants and freelance writing, so my own health-care coverage was fairly weak. That's why Dr. Schwartz got the occasional ring from his youngest son's good buddy, and most of the time it was helpful.

But once in 1998, I came home from Australia convinced I'd picked up some kind of virus over there. I described the one most prominent symptom, and he gave me a quick diagnosis.

Perhaps because I wasn't an actual paying patient, Dr. Schwartz -- almost as funny as his son Barry -- might have thought the doctor-patient relationship didn't need to be quite so confidential. That was at least my guess the next time I visited the Schwartz compound for some kind of cookout, and was greeted by Barry's siblings with inquiries about my green stools.

Dr. Schwartz was surrounded by loved ones when he died at age 73.