Yvonne Thel Driscoll, M.D.

July 2, 1936  –  April 14, 2025

Yvonne Thel Driscoll, M.D., died peacefully at her home in Oradell on April 14, 2025 at the age of 88. Devout Catholic, devoted wife of John, caring mother of six children, proud and doting grandmother of sixteen grandchildren, dutiful daughter, loving sister, dedicated physician, fiercely loyal friend, and faithful parishioner—in her nearly nine decades of life, Yvonne was each of these things and so, so much more.

Born in the Western Pennsylvania steel town of Aliquippa, Yvonne was the second of four children of the late Dr. Henry C. Thel, M.D., and his wife, Anne Kelly Halpin Thel. She attended Mount Mercy Academy in Pittsburgh (where she was president of the student council) before going on to Trinity College in Washington, D.C. (where she was also president of the student government). Trinity had a formative influence on Yvonne, and she remained devoted to the college and to the dear friends she made there for the rest of her life–returning many times for reunions, and hosting gatherings of Trinity women at her home. Yvonne earned her medical degree at what was then known as Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (now Drexel University College of Medicine), where she was elected president of the medical student council (hat trick!) and was one of five graduates named to the national medical honor society, Alpha Omega Alpha.

Following medical school, Yvonne returned to Pittsburgh for her internship in 1962. There she met another physician-in-training named John Driscoll. Initially, they were just friends: when Yvonne wasn’t bailing John out by examining his expectant-mother patients to let him know which women were far enough along to go to the delivery room, she was loaning him her car on the weekends. In time, however, a romance blossomed and they were married in Aliquippa, PA, in 1964–and would remain so for the next 58 years, until John’s death in 2022.

Soon after their marriage, Yvonne and John relocated to Washington, DC, where Yvonne trained as a pediatrician at Children’s National Medical Center. In Washington, Yvonne and John welcomed (in quite rapid succession) the first two of their six children: Anne in 1965, and John III in 1966. “One Mother’s Day I had no children,” Yvonne used to say, “and the next Mother’s Day I had two.” By the time John III was born, Yvonne had become the chief resident at Children’s Hospital. And just a few weeks later, her husband was deployed for a one-year tour of duty as a physician with the Navy in Vietnam. Chief resident with two kids under the age of two and a husband on the other side of the world in a war zone? Yvonne pulled it off, with an assist from her mother and mother-in-law and, she once recalled, “a LOT of prayer.”

When John returned from Vietnam and completed his residency, the family moved to Oradell, NJ, and John and Yvonne joined the pediatrics faculty of Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and the staff of New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, which is also where Yvonne gave birth to four more children. At “Babies Hospital,” as the hospital was affectionately known, Yvonne and John worked in close collaboration for many years, with Yvonne running the Neonatal Follow-up Clinic that tracked and cared for hundreds (if not thousands) of preterm babies John had treated in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (a unit that now bears his name).

In 1983, as she and John continued to raise their family and work at Columbia, Yvonne took on a new role as the first medical director of the newly opened Spectrum for Living, a residential facility in Closter, NJ, for individuals with multiple (and often significant) disabilities. Yvonne would spend the next three decades of her professional life (and a good deal of her personal life, as well) caring for the residents of Spectrum and its various satellite facilities. The residents faced tremendous challenges—some could not walk, others could not speak, and some could do neither—but in Yvonne they found not just a doctor, but an advocate who went to every length to ensure they lived their best lives. To see Yvonne walking the halls of Spectrum and interacting with the residents was to see a physician who truly was in her element. Yvonne treated the residents with the attentive care and dignity she knew they deserved as human beings made in the image and likeness of God—and they loved her as much as she loved them.

Yvonne retired as medical director of Spectrum for Living in 2014 and devoted herself to spending even more time with her family and her grandkids. Yvonne loved many things—cheering on her children and grandchildren at their sporting events (at times perhaps a bit too enthusiastically); spending vacations on Martha’s Vineyard for the last 50 summers, combing the beach on Vineyard Haven harbor for sea glass to add to her extensive collection, and adding a second dining room table to host all the guests she invited to Thanksgiving dinner—but she loved none of them as much as she loved her family, the Blessed Mother, and our Lord.

Yvonne is survived by her children, Anne (Robert St. Peter, M.D.), John (Ann Mathews), Bill (Anne), Margaret (Matthew Baltay), Kevin (Katherine), Michael (Lauren), and sixteen grandchildren who knew her as “Grammy”: Claire and William St. Peter; Harriet Driscoll; Meghan, Grace, and Maeve Driscoll; Thomas, Luke, Charles, and Matthew Baltay; Declan, Mairead, and Seamus Driscoll; and Keelin, Elery, and Aidan Driscoll. In addition to her husband John and her parents, Henry and Anne, Yvonne was predeceased by her sisters Mary Margaret Watkins (Thomas) and Anne (Hon. John J. Driscoll), and her brother, Henry (Patty).

Yvonne’s was a life truly well lived. She leaves a legacy of grace and strength that will live on in the hearts of her family and all who were blessed to know her. Well done, good and faithful servant (Matthew 25:21).

Visiting hours will be on Tuesday, April 22, from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. at Basralian Funeral Home, 559 Kinderkamack Rd. in Oradell, N.J. followed by a Mass of Christian Burial at St. Joseph’s Church in Oradell at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, April 23. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to the John M. Driscoll Jr., M.D. Children’s Fund for the Department of Pediatrics at Columbia University Medical Center. Please visit https://www.givenow.columbia.edu/# and enter “Driscoll” in the search field to make a donation.