Christopher Courtney Gates, 87

Concord, Mass.

U.S. Navy veteran and respected psychiatrist Christopher Courtney Gates, M.D., of Concord, Mass., died on Saturday, Jan. 30. He was 87. Son of the late Frances Crozier and Percival Taylor Gates, he was born in Montclair, N.J., on June 7, 1933. The youngest of three boys, he passed his childhood with two brothers tinkering with engines, lighting firecrackers, shooting B.B. guns and sailing off Vinalhaven in Maine, where the family spent their summers. In his teens, he moved to Suffield, Conn. He attended The Loomis School (now Loomis Chaffee School) in Windsor, Conn., graduating in 1951, and did a post-graduate year at Harrow School in Harrow, London, England. At Harrow it thrilled him to meet Old Harrovian Sir Winston Churchill and to set the school distance record for throwing a cricket ball. On breaks between terms, he toured Europe with friends in a dilapidated van. Later, he would fondly recall camping misadventures, climbing through a youth hostel window after breaking curfew, and overindulging at a Danish smorgasbord. From 1952 to 1956 he attended Yale University, graduating with a B.A. in History of the Arts and Letters. At Yale he rowed lightweight crew and joined the Elihu Club. After graduation, he returned to Loomis to teach English before joining the U.S. Navy in 1957. He attained the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade in his role as operations officer on the destroyer tender U.S.S. Bryce Canyon.

After the Navy, he took a job at Yale as a freshman counselor and started a college-prep tutoring business. At the same time, he took classes that qualified him to apply to medical school. In 1961 he enrolled in the Yale School of Medicine, where, in the midst of his studies, he met Smith College alumna Helen Hardcastle. They married in 1963 and moved to Ohio in 1965, where he interned at University Hospitals in Cleveland. In 1966 the couple moved to Brookline, Mass., for him to do his residency in psychiatry at Boston’s Massachusetts Mental Health Center. The hospital appointed him Chief Resident in 1968 – a proud moment that resulted in his mentoring a group of psychiatrists with whom he remained friends for the rest of his life. A fellowship in child psychiatry followed before he embarked on his life’s true work in 1971: private practice. He treated patients in his home office for more than 45 years, healing many and providing comfort and reassurance as they grappled with their illnesses. He retired in 2018 at age 85.