MICHAEL BLACKSTONE Obituary

BLACKSTONE--Dr. Michael Oliver. Dr. Michael O. Blackstone, an
acclaimed University of Chicago gastroenterologist and textbook
author, died in New York City on March 7, 2022. He was 81.
Blackstone grew up in Englewood, NJ, the son of drugstore owners
who would later run a wholesale cosmetic business. His medical
career took him first to Germany, where he was stationed during a tour
of duty during the Vietnam War. In 1974, he went to Chicago and
remained a professor in the department of medicine for nearly thirty years. In 1984, he
published Endoscopic Interpretation: Normal and Pathologic Appearances of the
Gastrointestinal Tract. The volume is considered the definitive reference on the
techniques and procedures of endoscopy. He returned to the East Coast in 2020,
ultimately settling in Manhattan. Here he loved walking along the East River, eating
French food, particularly stinky cheese, using the Metropolitan Opera's Met Player on
his iPad, and reading political nonfiction and Shakespeare's canon. Blackstone is
survived by a daughter, Maya, a CNN producer; a son, Charles, a novelist and deputy
chief of staff to New York City Mayor Eric Adams's department of homeless services,
and his wife Caroline, a senior vice president at healthcare marketing agency Calcium
in Philadelphia; another daughter, Elissa, a grant writer based in Austin, Texas; and
Anita Pomerance, an attorney, his beloved companion. He was preceded in death by
his wife, Linda Projansky; his brother, Gerald Blackstone; and his parents, Helen and
Daniel Blackstone