Physician's Death Might Have Been Suicide

Dr. Lynn Barton McDonald, a longtime Bend physician whose body was pulled from the Deschutes River on Monday, might have been an indirect casualty of the Bend real estate boom and bust.

Ethan Lindsey reported on OPB news yesterday that the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Department is investigating the possibility that McDonald’s death was a suicide.

“McDonald was known to be in financial trouble,” Lindsey reported. “He owned several unsold properties in Bend’s wilting housing market and he was close to losing a mobile home park he owned.

“Deschutes County Sheriff Larry Blanton says foul play is not suspected, but investigators’ work continues.”

“We may never know what happened up there that night and what happened for him to be in the water, to succumb to the situation in the water there,” Blanton said. “We may never know what exactly happened there.”

In addition to the mobile home park on Parrell Road, which was placed in receivership in May, McDonald had invested in The Shire, another residential development in the same area with a Lord of the Rings theme.

McDonald, 58, had been an emergency room physician at St. Charles Medical Center for almost 30 years. He went missing last weekend, and divers found his body in the Deschutes below Benham Falls Monday evening. Memorial services are planned for Friday and Sunday. For information call St. Charles at 541-382-4321.

This article appears in Jul 10-16, 2008.

To have heard about Doc McDonald leaving all of us with no hope and having taken that route of solving a temporary problem with a permanent solution was really sad. He as a great guy, a good father and one of the best doctors in this area. He has treated me a few times in the last two decades due to my injuries from outdoor activities and was always a gentleman and a very kind individual.

I have heard the rumors and yet regardless of the content of these rumors, people checking out like this being spiritually and emotionally bankrupt is a lesson for all of us and we have to ask ourself what kind of society we live in when people give up on their hopes and dreams?

A human life is invaluable and we need to all start working together as a community. We have so called communities all over this city where people barely know the person next door to them who have lived there for a decade. Does this reflect us as a nation of hermits and recluses?

A community is only as good as the people in it and when was the last time you had your neighbor over for lunch of dinner or a beer in the backyard?

Where were this doctors true friends? It is not a guilt trip, but how can we allow one of our own brothers to leave us like this and not have known or been up front enough to have given him a hug and comforted him when he was down from a rumored divorce and a rather large financial loss which has become a common recurring theme in our society?

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Sad story says:

July 20, 2008 at 10:47 pm

To have heard about Doc McDonald leaving all of us with no hope and having taken that route of solving a temporary problem with a permanent solution was really sad. He as a great guy, a good father and one of the best doctors in this area. He has treated me a few times in the last two decades due to my injuries from outdoor activities and was always a gentleman and a very kind individual.

I have heard the rumors and yet regardless of the content of these rumors, people checking out like this being spiritually and emotionally bankrupt is a lesson for all of us and we have to ask ourself what kind of society we live in when people give up on their hopes and dreams?

A human life is invaluable and we need to all start working together as a community. We have so called communities all over this city where people barely know the person next door to them who have lived there for a decade. Does this reflect us as a nation of hermits and recluses?

A community is only as good as the people in it and when was the last time you had your neighbor over for lunch of dinner or a beer in the backyard?

Where were this doctors true friends? It is not a guilt trip, but how can we allow one of our own brothers to leave us like this and not have known or been up front enough to have given him a hug and comforted him when he was down from a rumored divorce and a rather large financial loss which has become a common recurring theme in our society?