Dr. Kurt Metzl passed away on April 17 in Denver, Colorado, after a brave three-year battle with neuroendocrine cancer, weeks shy of his 90th birthday.
Dr. Metzl was a thoughtful, loving and deeply beloved husband, father and grandfather, and an energetic and committed leader in the Jewish, pediatric and civic communities of Kansas City, Denver and beyond. He was a visionary patriarch, a loyal friend, a kind and empathic spirit, a unique thinker and a relentless doer. He rarely missed a sporting event, performance or late-night airport pickup if one of his children or grandchildren was involved. He was also a nearly seven-decade Kansas City Chiefs superfan, a schnitzel connoisseur, an avid skier and a dedicated biker.
Dr. Metzl led an extraordinary life that spanned countries, cities and generations. He was born in 1935 in St. Leonhard am Forst, Austria, the only child of Fritz and Margit Metzl. Fritz sold horses, and Margit tended home, but life became increasingly perilous in the leadup to World War II. In 1938, the family escaped to neighboring Switzerland, where they became displaced persons. Most of Kurt’s grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins remained in Austria and perished in concentration camps. With their home in Austria taken and their relatives killed, Kurt and his parents emigrated to America in 1948 when, with the help of the Jewish Federation, they procured visas and immigrated to the United States.
When the Metzls landed in New York, they wore tags around their necks because they spoke no English. They were met by representatives of HIAS (then called the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) who sent them by train to Kansas City, Missouri — a midwestern city none of them had ever heard of that would be their new home. When they arrived in Kansas City, they were met by resettlement representatives from Jewish Family Services and placed in a home with three other refugee families.
“I still remember the woman who picked us up at the train station, Mrs. Yudelovitz,” Dr. Metzl told The Kansas City Jewish Chronicle in an interview. “Her husband was the timpanist for the Kansas City Orchestra.”
In Kansas City, the Metzls worked to replant, rebuild and contribute. Fritz and Margit cleaned homes, scraping together enough money to open a kosher market — Freddie’s Kosher Meat Market on Troost Avenue — that would become a hub for Kansas City’s small but growing Jewish community. Kurt was a diligent and gifted student who went from speaking not a word of English at age 14 to becoming salutatorian of his 500-student class at Central High School four years later. He became a US citizen, won the Kansas City Yale Prize as the city’s top scholar and attended Washington University in St. Louis on a full scholarship with the dream of becoming a doctor. Everyone who purchased meat at Freddie’s was unsubtly pressured by Margit into contributing spare change to the “send Kurt to medical school” jar.
Kurt attended the University of Kansas Medical School, where he again graduated at the top of his class, then moved to New York to begin a residency in pediatrics at New York Hospital/Cornell Medical Center. There, he met Marilyn Sue Newman, a radiant speech pathologist at New York Presbyterian who had grown up in Queens, New York. The pair quickly became inseparable and wed after a whirlwind courtship.
Like many immigrants, Kurt was deeply patriotic, grateful for the opportunities afforded by the United States and wishing to give back. After completing his residency, he volunteered for the U.S. Air Force, where he entered at the rank of Captain. The Metzls were stationed first in Huntsville, Alabama, and then at the NATO hospital in Izmir, Turkey, where the couple’s first son, Jonathan, was born. After completing military service, the couple moved back to Kansas City, where Kurt joined the thriving pediatric practice of his own former pediatrician, Julius Kantor, along with Dr. Marvin Bordy. The family welcomed three more sons, Jordan, Jamie and Joshua.
Over the subsequent decades the Metzl family would become active and vibrant contributors to Kansas City’s civic life.
“We are a family that is involved with serving the community,” Dr. Metzl said in a media interview when he became a leader in the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Marilyn thrived as a psychologist and psychoanalyst. Jonathan would become a professor, Jordan a sports medicine physician, Jamie a writer and entrepreneur, and Josh an orthopedic surgeon. Kurt and Marilyn maintained their home in Kansas City until 2020, when they moved to Denver to be closer to their grandchildren, Anna and Clara, and their daughter-in-law, Ali, a Denver lawyer and community leader. On his retirement, Dr. Metzl was lauded by the Kansas City medical community.
“He is just rare,” a colleague said at the time. “I think one of the reasons he is such a popular doctor is his rare combination of empathy and good medicine. He seemed to know everything.”
In 2010, Kurt and Marilyn Metzl returned to Schaffhausen, Switzerland — the town where Fritz, Margit and Kurt found refuge decades earlier. Kurt was named an honorary citizen, and the local paper detailed his remarkable life and career in an article titled “The Metzl Circle.” Kurt would take this as the title of his 2023 autobiography.
“The title of this work is taken from an article written about my return to Switzerland after our displacement and fleeing,” Dr. Metzl wrote. “But much more broadly I celebrate the human ability to create a sense of unity and completion, remembrance and healing without erasure in defiance of efforts to kill our bodies, spirits and memories.”
Even toward the end of his life in Denver, he led group outings to the Metropolitan Opera in HD, completed the morning Wordle, and, with Marilyn, was a regular on the sidelines of Anna’s and Clara’s soccer games. If life is about showing up, Kurt Metzl showed up.
Kurt Metzl is survived by Marilyn Newman Metzl, his wife of 64 years; sons Jonathan, Jordan, Jamie and Joshua Metzl; daughter-in-law Ali Fidler Metzl; granddaughters Anna and Clara Metzl; and countless others whose lives he touched, inspired, bettered or saved.
Before his death, Kurt Metzl suggested that people wanting to honor his legacy contribute to a charity of their choice or HIAS, hug the people they love and keep fighting to make America and the world a continually better place. To that end, the family has established the Kurt and Marilyn Metzl Endowment in support of the HIAS Economic Advancement Fund, which will provide in perpetuity micro-loans helping refugees and other forcibly displaced entrepreneurs in the United States launch and grow their businesses and realize their dreams.