Norman Braman — billionaire, auto magnate, art collector, philanthropist, former NFL owner and most recently, political activist — has met his share of interesting people in his lifetime. but few compare to his longtime doctor and friend, Dr. Eugene “Gene” J. Sayfie.
Sayfie is a Miami cardiologist and internist who after five decades of practicing medicine still gives out his cell phone number to every new patient. And when necessary, he makes house calls.
“he is one of the most remarkable people I have met in my life,” Braman said. “he is caring, loving, gentle, kind he is very special.”
The University of Miami Miller School of Medicine recently recognized Sayfie’s dedication by honoring him with the university’s first Distinguished Master Clinician Award. with the help of about $1 million in private donations, the medical school also opened the Eugene J. Sayfie Pavilion for Excellence in Patient Care.
“There are very few men, who love their wives, their family, their God, their profession and their patients, equally and passionately,” said former UM Board of Trustees Chairman Dr. Phillip George. “his heart just has room for all of it. There is always a balance. he is not obsessed with any portion of it.”
In Sayfie’s new office, a silver frame displays a photo of him and his wife, Suzanne, 63, executive director of the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis. They met when she was 14. She had just started at Miami High; he was dating her cousin. A few years later at a church convention in West Virginia, the couple danced once. he never forgot her. They wed when she was 19 and have been married 43 years.
She has a theory behind his caring ways: “My husband was born into a poor family. his father and grandfather passed away when he was a little boy. his uneducated grandmother and mother raised him.”
Sayfie’s grandmother and mother were born in a small village in Syria. during World War I, his grandfather left to help rescue a brother, who was a revolutionary fighter against the French.
“he got stuck there,” said Sayfie, 77. “My grandmother had to take care of my mother and my aunt so she grew silkworms and wheat and bragged that in 1918 she earned men’s wages.”
His grandmother left the village to make her way to the United States. She traveled to Damascus and to Beirut, and dodged an encounter with the French, who wanted her to trade her gold for French francs. She boarded a ship in Marseille, and arrived with her two daughters at new York’s Ellis Island in the early 1920s.
“My mother quit school when she was in third grade, and worked in a meat-packing company,” Sayfie said.
His mother met his father in Charleston, W.V. he was “an unsuccessful peddler” from Lebanon, who died when Sayfie was 3. his grandfather died when he was 8. his mother remarried a man he used to call “Pop,” but he died shortly later.
“In the Arab world mourning and loud wailing is common. I just remember, black, black, black. I wore a black band on my arm for at least a year,” Sayfie said.
His older brother, Ernest Sayfie, was his paternal figure. he had followed him as a newspaper delivery boy and as an altar boy in the Antiochian Christian Eastern Orthodox Church. he grew up wanting to become a priest and spent hours reading philosophy and writing poetry.