Dr. Peter B. F. Randolph

A leader in community Mental Health for inner city Boston.

Dr. Peter B. F. Randolph of Lexington and Wareham, Massachusetts, died on August 27, of complications from a fall. He was 92. A prominent Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst, he chose a career of public service, dedicating himself to treating the mentally ill in the under-served communities of inner-city Boston.

Born and raised in New York City, he attended The Buckley School and then Hotchkiss, graduating in 1952. He then went on to Yale University, majoring in history and graduating in 1956. Unsure of what he wanted to do as graduation approached, he decided he might give medicine a try, though as a history major, he didn't have the required science background. He spent a year after graduation studying chemistry and biology and then enrolled at Harvard Medical School, graduating in 1961. While he initially he thought he might become a surgeon, he found himself gravitating towards Psychiatry, and after earning his MD and completing a 2-year residency in medicine, at University Hospital in Cleveland, he chose to return to Boston to do a three-year residency in Psychiatry, at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, becoming the chief psychiatric resident from 1965 to 1966.

For the next two years, he did his military service in Washington D.C. at the National Institute of Mental Health and was a staff psychiatrist at the Mental Health Study Center in Bethesda Maryland. Following that, he and his wife, Helen, decided to settle in Boston and in 1968, he joined the psychiatric staff of the Tufts University School of Medicine, eventually becoming a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in 1979. As part of his affiliation with Tufts, he also joined the staff at New England Medical Center Hospital in Boston, becoming a full-time Psychiatrist in 1973 and Senior Psychiatrist in 1988. He remained at both institutions until his retirement in 1999. He completed his psychoanalytic training at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, graduating in 1977.

While he always maintained a small private practice, the principle focus of Dr. Randolph's career was in publicly funded community mental health, treating the chronically mentally ill in the inner-city Boston communities, where it was most needed. At NEMC, he became the director of adult services at the federally financed Tufts Community Mental Health Center, seeing patients from South Boston, North Dorchester and Chinatown. He was also director of the Legal-Correction Services, the South Boston Court Clinic, and director of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health Area, coordinating all the mental health, substance abuse and mental retardation activities in what was defined as the Bay Cove Catchment Area. When a division of the Tufts Community Mental Health Center, known then as Tufts Human Services, needed to change its name, Dr. Randolph helped coordinate its transition into the state run Bay Cove Human Services, and he became, first the area director of its mental health unit, and then the full director, serving in that capacity for over 20 years.

No matter their circumstances, Dr. Randolph always treated his patients with the greatest compassion and respect. As a leader, he never talked about his achievements, he was humble and self-effacing, preferring to give credit to the team around him. His job was multi-faceted: In addition to working directly with individuals and families in the inner city, he was responsible for making sure the Bay Cove Mental Health system remained solvent. He would make regular trips up the hill to William Bulger's office to advocate for state funding and to Tip O'Neil's office to argue for Federal support. He fought fiercely to establish a network of halfway houses in his treatment area, in the belief that helping his patients to rejoin the community not only benefited them, but the community at large as well. In the 1990s, he became the director of the psychiatric unit at the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital, which was then dealing with an overflow of patients from the recently closed Boston State Hospital. His efforts to give them beds and place them in halfway houses kept chronically mentally ill patients from being put out on the streets.

His leadership extended to other areas. He was president of the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society from 1994 to 1995, a longtime member of the board of the Cambridge Community Foundation, the board of the Institute for Child and Adolescent Development, and the Park School in Brookline. In 2002, he joined the board of Bay Cove Human Services after retiring from the directorship and remained there until becoming a member emeritus in 2016. He taught throughout his career, and in addition to his Clinical Professorship at Tufts, he became a lecturer in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in 2000 and was on the faculty at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute.

Gifted with a wonderful old-world charm and a sly sense of humor, he was unfailingly polite, a gentleman in the truest sense of the word: a gentle-man. Trusted and respected by his patients and colleagues alike, he was a great listener, endlessly curious about the inner workings of the human mind. He loved music, and in school, college and for all his adult life was an enthusiastic amateur singer. He sang in barbershop octets at Hotchkiss and Yale and was a founding member of the Harvard Medical School Chorus. He acted and sang in the annual Harvard Medical School second year show, and again in his fourth-year show after being inducted into the Aesculapian Club. He became a member of The Tavern Club in 1989 and from then until the last three years of his life, he acted, directed, and sang in many of their productions. He enjoyed attending theatre and films, and he and his wife were longtime patrons of the Metropolitan Opera, traveling to New York a couple of times a year to hear lectures and attend performances.

He loved nature, the outdoors, and was an avid sailor; he learned as a teenager during a family vacation to Martha's Vinyard, where he raced boats in Edgartown Harbor. The pennants he won in those races hung on the wall of his summer home on Buzzard's Bay for many years. He taught his children to sail and passed on to them a lifelong love of the ocean. He sailed through the islands of the Hebrides and crewed in the Marion-Bermuda race on a boat owned by a dear friend from his medical residency days in Cleveland.

In his retirement years, he and his wife, Helen, took time to travel, making trips to Southeast and Central Asia, Europe, Japan, East Africa, India, and New Zealand. He remained always curious about the history of the places they visited and fascinated by their different cultures. On an adventuresome trip to Antarctica with his eldest son, Christopher, he kayaked through towering icebergs and braved a dip into the frigid ocean waters where a hot-spring was supposedly located. It wasn't particularly hot, but he happily plunged in anyway.

Dr. Randolph is survived by his wife of over 70 years, Helen Garside Randolph; two sons, Christopher B.F Randolph and his wife, Audrey Matson of Brooklyn Heights, NY and Nicholas D.F. Randolph of Austin, TX; two daughters, Helen Tod Randolph of Great Barrington, MA and Eliza C.F. Randolph of Berkeley CA; and two grandchildren, Leia and Carlos Figueroa A third daughter, Robin, predeceased him in 2011.

A Memorial Service will be held on Saturday, November 21, at 2:00 PM, at Harvard Memorial Church, in Cambridge, MA. In lieu of flowers, donations in his name can be made to Bay Cove Human Services, in Boston.

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