(1930-2016)
Inducted into Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, 1983
A Hartford native, Isenberg attended the Loomis School, where he lettered in football his junior and senior year and served as team captain his senior year. He also lettered in baseball and basketball, earning his superlative as “Best Athlete.” He went on to Harvard, where he was on the football team for three years; he was captain of the football team in 1950. He was recognized by Harvard with a “most valuable player” award in 1950 and with a “best unsung player in New England” that same year.
He wrote about his football experience thirty years later for the Harvard Magazine: “Playing football at Harvard was both fantasy and actuality. It channeled my emotional needs to benefit both myself and the University; it represented the culmination of childhood dreams; and it functioned as a bridge to future commitments.”
He continued his studies at Harvard Medical School and trained in psychiatry. After two years of service in the Army Medical Corps, his career took him to social psychiatry at Columbia Point Medical Center, the first neighborhood health center. He also worked at the Boston V.A. Hospital, at Beth Israel Hospital and the Joslin Clinic. He was appointed to McLean Hospital as Director of Residency Training and mentored those who would become pre-eminent psychiatrists: clinicians, researchers, and academicians. After retiring from McLean in 1994, he accepted the Clinical Chair of Psychiatry at the American University of Antigua, College of Medicine. In that capacity he supervised the psychiatric training of aspiring medical students in hospitals across America.