John Lichtenstein

A family medicine practitioner who also provided drug and alcohol treatment and acupuncture, John Stuart Lichtenstein was born on November 13, 1944, in Boston, Mass., to Eleanor and Norman Lichtenstein.

At age two, he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and was not expected to live into his teen years. But he proved all doctors wrong; John died on August 30, 2024, at age 79.

Funeral services were held on September 8 at Loucks Funeral Home in Ellenville. He will be tanning indefinitely at Fantinekill Cemetery in Wawarsing where he will be close to ice cream and ogling bikers.

John was raised in Jamaica Estates, Queens, and graduated Kew-Forest School in Forest Hills. He attended Chicago Medical School, Class of 1970. He frequently flew to San Francisco on college weekends, drawn by the counterculture and music of Haight-Ashbury.

John pursued both Western and Eastern modalities in his practice of five decades. He also spoke four other languages in addition to English.

John was working in Lincoln Hospital in New York City when it was taken over by the Young Lords, Puerto Rican revolutionaries, and became part of the hospital collective. He would later be interviewed for a documentary on the incident. He was also a guest on the Morton Downey Jr. Show on the perils of drug addiction.

John first found recovery from drugs and alcohol in the early 1980s and celebrated four decades of sobriety. He was active in leading drug recovery conferences, such as IDAA.

He briefly practiced in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s, where he was introduced to Islam and incorporated that into his Jewish faith. 

John was best known for his signature Hawaiian shirts which he always wore with diabetes-friendly sandals.

Active in the recovery community, John held positions at major recovery centers in the Hudson Valley region, including Veritas Villa, Dynamite Youth Center, and the Recovery Center.

In an era of diminishing medical care under corporate insurance, John still made house calls and saw patients for a penny.

John was a faithful contributor to causes such as Southern Poverty Law Center, SAGE, and NAACP.

John frequently closed meetings with the “Our Mother” version of the Lord’s Prayer and the “we” version of The Serenity Prayer. He often asserted his belief that God and Santa Claus were both females.

He leaves behind a community of simultaneously angry, befuddled and loving people. To know John was to get into arguments with him several times – and to finish each one with a hug.

John is survived by his husband Scott Jeune, aka The Bride of Lichtenstein, his companion of three decades after meeting through a kinky personal in Drummer magazine. They were married in February 2019. John is also survived by his brother David Lichtenstein and sister Nancy Kappler (husband Ted), numerous grand-nieces and -nephews, and you, dear reader:

Now go live life a little more as he would and remember him, and E88.