Remembering Dr. Phil Bammer

I found out yesterday (8/9/10) that my friend & colleague Dr. Phil Bammer died suddenly of a heart attack on Saturday (8/7).

Phil was a good friend of mine. The kind of buddy who understood a foul-mouthed guy from New Jersey like me. He was definitely a person whose professional opinion I valued and a person in my life that I will miss.

Last time I saw Phil we were flying back from Vegas in May after teaching an ART seminar. He somehow talked the Frontier lady into moving me up to the front of the plane next to him. We had a couple of beers which he insisted on buying. We made vague plans to get together and practice ART protocols so we could keep getting better.

We shook hands after we got out of the airport, and that was it.

I knew him as the kind of person who would drop everything to help a buddy, a great ART instructor who cared about whether each person he worked with learned what he was teaching, and a person who always had something funny to say. I’ve been hearing stories from his patients about Phil going out of his way to make sure a patient knew how to lift weight correctly, and Phil travelling to the Pepsi center to treat an injured high school wrestler. None of us can believe that he’s gone. Teaching for Active Release (we were both instructors who taught together frequently) will never be the same.

Phil, my friend, you will be missed.

 Me, Mike Leahy, Faye Jones, and Phil in 2002

If you’d like add your thought about Dr. Bammer to this post, please go ahead and type them up and email them to me at denverchiro@yahoo.com . If you’d be kind enough to sign your name, I’ll be happy to add your thought here – Glenn