D. T. Sargeant, MD

Class Year

1975

Affiliation

Alumni

Posted on: May 2, 2019

Daniel Trigg Sargeant, MD, of Williamsburg, Virginia, died on April 15, 2019 in Richmond, Virginia. He was born on August 4, 1945 in Washington, D.C., to Daniel Trigg Sargeant, LLB, and Mathilde Davis Sargeant. He spent his childhood in Charlottesville, Virginia on Rugby Road. He delivered newspapers by bicycle, and he mowed the lawns of his neighbors (including, once, the writer-in-residence William Faulkner). He studied mathematics and logic at the University of Virginia as an Echols Scholar. In 1967 he was graduated with intermediate honors and Phi Beta Kappa. He was commissioned a lieutenant in the United States Air Force, and deployed to Yokota Air Base in Tokyo, where he wrote programs for an early computer. He returned to the University of Virginia for medical school, which he completed in 1974. His residency in pediatrics was at Shands Hospital at the University of Florida. His fellowship in pediatric endocrinology was at Children’s Hospital of Washington University in St. Louis.

Dr. Sargeant practiced medicine in the Air Force, because there he never had to fight an insurance company. He was gentle and kind, and his patients loved him. Dr. Sargeant was on the clinical faculty at Tulane University and the University of California, Davis. He developed a fascination with diagnostic imaging, and he completed a residency in radiology at the University of Virginia. He practiced diagnostic radiology until his retirement as a colonel in 2005.

Dr. Sargeant’s education provided him a command of art, literature, science, history, music, and modern languages. From his time in Japan, he developed an appreciation for ink painting and Imagism. He was partial to the arias of Verdi and Donizetti. Emmylou Harris was his favorite singer. He loved Louis L’Amour’s cowboy novels and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. Dr. Sargeant could recall every detail of BBC murder mysteries with eidetic precision. He attended Mass at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in Williamsburg. Dr. Sargeant possessed a cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a candid, equitable, dispassionate mind, and a noble and courteous bearing in the conduct of life.

Dr. Sargeant is survived by his wife, Andrea Chisick, and two children, A. G. Davis Sargeant and Anna E. T. Sargeant, and a large extended family. We cherish and honor his memory.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that any donations go to the Norfolk Public Library Foundation in his name, and the proceeds will be directed to the Sargeant Memorial Collection.