Dr. Art Grossman, a longtime Everett family practice physician, soccer coach and YMCA fitness instructor, died Dec. 21 of ALS. Grossman is seen here in 2013, stopped along Marine View Drive in Everett with his bike. (Dan Bates / Herald file)

Dr. Art Grossman, a longtime Everett family practice physician, soccer coach and YMCA fitness instructor, died Dec. 21 of ALS. Grossman is seen here in 2013, stopped along Marine View Drive in Everett with his bike. (Dan Bates / Herald file)

Everett doctor diagnosed with ALS didn’t need a bucket list

Virginia Grossman said her husband, Art, who died Dec. 21, planned to keep doing what he loved.

When Everett’s Dr. Art Grossman was diagnosed with ALS, the debilitating neurological condition known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, he told his wife he wouldn’t be making a bucket list. He liked his life just as it was.

Virginia Grossman said her indomitable and incredibly fit husband planned to keep doing what he loved — bicycling and teaching exercise classes — for as long as he could. “And that’s exactly what he did,” she said.

A family practice doctor and obstetrician who had delivered the babies of children he brought into the world a generation ago, Arthur Saul Grossman died Dec. 21, just eight days after turning 71. He was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis about 18 months ago.

“We’re rewriting the book on how you’re supposed to act when you get old,” Grossman told The Herald in 2010 after completing a 154-mile bike ride called RAMROD (Ride Around Mount Rainier in One Day). At the time, he was 63 and still busy in his practice with Western Washington Medical Group in Everett.

Dr. Arthur Saul Grossman died just eight days after turning 71. (Dan Bates / Herald file)

Dr. Arthur Saul Grossman died just eight days after turning 71. (Dan Bates / Herald file)

“Arthur was truly a unique person,” said Dr. Randall Gould, a former colleague of Grossman’s. Both doctors joined the Everett Family Practice Center in 1977. “I have never known another physician with more compassion and more talent. It was an honor to work side by side with him for 20 years,” said Gould, who now lives in Kona, Hawaii.

“He was always positive, decent, careful, prepared and humorous,” said Gould, adding that his colleague had “a highly developed sense of social responsibility.”

Grossman retired from Western Washington Medical Group in 2013, at 66, but until three months before his death he volunteered at Providence Everett Healthcare Clinic, now Community Health Center of Snohomish County. Retirement simply meant more time to help. “He started using his many gifts to try to improve the lives of many others in our community,” Gould said.

For years a referee and coach with Washington Youth Soccer, Grossman stepped up his schedule by teaching fitness classes at the Everett Family YMCA and at LA Fitness.

“It’s a huge loss,” said Ted Wenta, the YMCA of Snohomish County’s senior vice president of operations. “For many of us, Art was the YMCA,” Wenta said in the online guest book accompanying Grossman’s obituary in The Herald.

Grossman taught cycling and other classes at the Y for at least a decade. Even as his disease progressed, “that was not who Art was,” Wenta said Friday. “He enjoyed being out on the bike instructing people, coaching them up.”

Dr. Art Grossman rides south, past the bluff at Legion Park in Everett. on a sunny winter day in early February 2013. The Everett family practice physician, soccer coach and YMCA fitness instructor died Dec. 21 of ALS. (Dan Bates / Herald file)

Dr. Art Grossman rides south, past the bluff at Legion Park in Everett. on a sunny winter day in early February 2013. The Everett family practice physician, soccer coach and YMCA fitness instructor died Dec. 21 of ALS. (Dan Bates / Herald file)

On Thanksgiving morning, Grossman was a surprise honoree before the start of a “Burn the Bird” fitness class at the Everett Y. The class was supposed to start at 8 a.m. But Gael Gebow, senior program director at the Everett Y, asked Grossman to be there a half-hour early.

“I made a secret-event invitation, with everyone pretending to come to cycle class,” said Gebow, Grossman’s longtime friend and his YMCA supervisor. She worried because Grossman was having trouble getting up the stairs of the multi-story building, but he made it to class. About 50 people showed up as a tribute to Grossman’s decade of service.

“There were a lot of tears in the room,” Gebow said. “He’s been the biggest inspiration. He became a certified personal trainer and was also a wellness coach. He met one-on-one with people to talk about wellness goals.” Along with cycling, Grossman taught a “Silver Sneakers” senior fitness class and water exercise for people with arthritis.

Gebow’s friendship with Grossman began long before she was his supervisor at the Y. “He was my kid’s soccer coach — and the most driven, determined human I’ve ever known,” she said.

Born Dec. 14, 1946, in Philadelphia, Grossman attended Brown University in Rhode Island, where he met his future wife. They settled in Everett after he completed his medical training.

“We wanted to be in a small city close to a big city,” said Virginia Grossman, who grew up in Iowa. She remembers their house across from what’s now Providence Regional Medical Center Everett on Colby Avenue. “He could walk across the street when it was time to deliver a baby,” she said.

Along with his wife, Grossman is survived by his three children and their spouses. Daughter Emily Grossman is a veterinarian in Seattle. Andrew Grossman is a nurse practitioner, also in Seattle, and Gretchen Grossman Webber lives in California’s San Diego area. He is also survived by five grandchildren — Cassie, Meadow, Gloria, Amelia and Milo — and by his brother and sister-in-law, Sam and Jean Grossman.

Medicine, fitness instruction and racking up miles on his bicycle — his goal was 14,000 miles in a year — weren’t Grossman’s only interests.

He had served on Everett’s Board of Park Commissioners and had coached a math Olympics team at Hawthorne Elementary School. Those two causes, parks and kids, were so close to his heart that in 2000 he wrote a letter to the editor published in The Herald. In it, he noted an “unbalanced concern for animals versus children.”

Grossman said in his letter that just 12 months after initiating the idea of an off-leash dog area, Everett had one. “However, it has been almost 12 years since the parks department identified a desperate shortage of play fields for the children of Everett to use for soccer, baseball and just running free and having fun,” he wrote.

When he wasn’t cycling or running marathons, he enjoyed opera and playing bridge.

“He had no ego,” Gould said. “Usually I would hear about one of his new endeavors from someone other than him. And there never seemed to be any limit to his time or energy.”

Virginia Grossman agrees. There was no sitting around, no hanging out.

“He was not a hang-out person. He was a bumblebee, always busy. He just stopped by to say hi occasionally,” she joked.

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Local News

Students from Explorer Middle School gather Wednesday around a makeshift memorial for Emiliano “Emi” Munoz, who died Monday, May 5, after an electric bicycle accident in south Everett. (Aspen Anderson / The Herald)
Community and classmates mourn death of 13-year-old in bicycle accident

Emiliano “Emi” Munoz died from his injuries three days after colliding with a braided cable.

Danny Burgess, left, and Sandy Weakland, right, carefully pull out benthic organisms from sediment samples on Thursday, May 1, 2025 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
‘Got Mud?’ Researchers monitor the health of the Puget Sound

For the next few weeks, the state’s marine monitoring team will collect sediment and organism samples across Puget Sound

Everett postal workers gather for a portrait to advertise the Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive on Wednesday, May 7, 2025 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Snohomish County letter carriers prepare for food drive this Saturday

The largest single-day food drive in the country comes at an uncertain time for federal food bank funding.

Everett
Everett considers ordinance to require more apprentice labor

It would require apprentices to work 15% of the total labor hours for construction or renovation on most city projects over $1 million.

Snohomish County prosecutor Kara Van Slyck delivers closing statement during the trial of Christian Sayre at the Snohomish County Courthouse on Thursday, May 8, 2025 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Jury deliberations begin in the fourth trial of former Everett bar owner

Jury members deliberated for about 2 hours before Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Millie Judge sent them home until Monday.

Christian Sayre sits in the courtroom before the start of jury selection on Tuesday, April 29, 2025 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Christian Sayre timeline

FEBRUARY 2020 A woman reports a sexual assault by Sayre. Her sexual… Continue reading

Christian Sayre walks out of the courtroom in handcuffs after being found guilty on two counts of indecent liberties at the end of his trial at the Snohomish County Courthouse on Monday, May 12, 2025 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Former bar owner convicted on two of three counts of sexual abuse

A jury deliberated for about 8 hours before returning guilty verdicts on two charges of indecent liberties Monday.

From left: Patrick Murphy, Shawn Carey and Justin Irish.
Northshore school board chooses 3 finalists in superintendent search

Shaun Carey, Justin Irish and Patrick Murphy currently serve as superintendents at Washington state school districts.

Craig Skotdal makes a speech after winning on Tuesday, April 22, 2025 in Tulalip, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Craig Skotdal: Helping to breathe life into downtown Everett

Skotdal is the recipient of the John M. Fluke Sr. award from Economic Alliance Snohomish County

Paine Field Community Day returns Saturday, May 17

The youth-focused celebration will feature aircraft displays, talks with pilots and a variety of local food vendors.

FILE — Jet fuselages at Boeing’s fabrication site in Everett, Wash., Sept. 28, 2022. Some recently manufactured Boeing and Airbus jets have components made from titanium that was sold using fake documentation verifying the material’s authenticity, according to a supplier for the plane makers. (Jovelle Tamayo/The New York Times)
Boeing adding new space in Everett despite worker reduction

Boeing is expanding the amount of space it occupies in… Continue reading

Kyle Parker paddles his canoe along the Snohomish River next to Langus Riverfront Park on Thursday, May 8, 2025 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Tip to Tip: Kyle Parker begins his canoe journey across the country

The 24-year-old canoe fanatic started in Neah Bay and is making his way up the Skykomish River.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.