John F. Raycroft, M.D., of Glastonbury, Connecticut, died on July 25, 2022, at the age of 91. He had a deep love of community and gave back in many more ways than just in the surgical suite.
He will be remembered for being instrumental in the founding of the Orthopedic Associates of Hartford. He was a member of the group and Hartford Hospital for over 50 years. He also treated patients at Newington Children’s Hospital and spent time educating the next generation of surgeons at University of Connecticut and Yale University.
He had leadership roles within the New England Orthopedic Society and the Yale Orthopedic Association.
While his professional life was very important to him so were his multitude of friendships, local and international community. He ran the local Grange annual fair in the early 1970s and in 1993, he organized a parade for the town’s tricentennial celebration. His family says he found that he loved organizing and motivating others. He also joined Glastonbury’s Historical Society and helped organized house and garden tours and the society’s fundraising efforts.
Always staying active, he was an avid golfer and tennis player, and enjoyed the theater, birding, summers in the Adirondacks.
Raycroft was always generous with his time and knowledge. According to his family and those who knew him best, “For years he would perform off-hours house calls, heading out with his black doctor’s bag like a scene out of an old western, to check on a neighborhood kid’s swollen knee or a family friend’s sore shoulder. For many summers, Jack would take his doctor bag up to Camp Dudley in Westport, NY, serving as camp doctor for a period. The Thanksgiving Road Race in Manchester, CT, was never missed. Jack ran it with friends, children, and grandchildren beginning in the late-1970s.”
Raycroft was born on April 27, 1931, in Brooklyn, New York, to the late John F. and Ruth Raycroft. His father was chief of surgery at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn and greatly influenced his life’s work, although he didn’t have a straight path to medicine.
After graduating from Poly Prep Day School, he went to Syracuse University for geography. He then served in the U.S. Navy for four years. It was then he enrolled in medical school at SUNY Downstate and received his medical degree in 1961. He then completed an orthopedic surgery internship and residency at Yale New Haven Hospital between 1961 and 1963. Next he spent three years at Newington Children’s Hospital furthering his training.
He married his wife Elizabeth in 1956 in Syracuse, New York. After moving around Connecticut for a while, they settled in South Glastonbury where they raised their four children.
He is survived by his wife, his children and their spouses, John F. Raycroft, Jr. and Laurie Souza of Swampscott, Massachusetts; Kathleen B. Raycroft-Meyer and Peter Meyer of Bristol, Vermont; Theodore S. and Audrey Raycroft of Sherborn, Massachusetts; Timothy W. Raycroft and Noelle Cocoros of Boston, Massachusetts; and eight grandchildren, Harrison, Oliver, John, Emma, Willard, Charles, M. Eleanor, and Cameron. His only sibling, David, passed away in 1982.
