After 45 years in a profession, most people are looking forward to retirement, and many are ready to call it quits.
For Dr. Louis A. Corsaro, a pediatrician who has seen thousands of local children—and, in some cases, their parents—the opposite is true.
Corsaro's last day as a physician with the Mount Kisco Medical Group (MKMG) was Dec. 31. At 70 years old, he said goodbye to his day job because of a corporate policy, one that Corsaro respects and understands. After all, he said, "It's difficult to keep up with medicine as you age."
"Ideally I would have worked for at least five more years," Corsaro said, adding that MKMG is a "superb" and "terrific" organization. "That would have been my fantasy."
Still, Corsaro's time as a pediatrician was nothing short of special. What he liked most was the opportunity to work with so many different people.
Between the last 26 years in the Bedford area, and the roughly 15 years he spent in Springfield, MA prior to that, Corsaro has seen thousands of patients. Some, including a 26-year-old man whose young daughter was a new patient, saw him through the early years of adulthood.
"The fondest memory I have is walking into an exam room and having had the mom as a patient, and being able to look at the child and say 'Hey, your mom was a little nervous when I was giving her her shots, too.'"
Since the fantasy of five more years with patients did not pan out, Corsaro has decided to "reinvent" himself. That means concentrating on his position as a consultant.
For the past 15 years, the doctor worked as the chief medical officer for the Katonah-Lewisboro School District. He's served in the same capacity for Bedford schools for about half that time, and over the years, he's added other districts, too. Now, he's up to five.
"The word retirement seems kind of funny, it doesn’t seem to fit him whatsoever," said Carol Bumbolow, a nurse for the Lakeland Central School District, one of the more recent additions to Corsaro's list.
The positions allow him to focus on special interests, one of which is establishing a standard for dealing with and preventing concussions.
"It's very important," Corsaro, a father of six, said. "...We’re recognizing we have a problem. We have to do something about it, and the answer is not to take kids out of sports. It's to make sports safer."
Corsaro is slated to present a lecture on concussion management to several of the school nurses in Putnam and Westchester later this month, according to Bumbolow, who complimented Corsaro's accessibility, passion and "wealth of knowledge."
"He's truly eager to help the children and he has a tremendous understanding of what families are undergoing," she said. "He extends himself to help students become as healthy and as involved as possible."
Beyond professional endeavors, Corsaro's retirement plans include sailing lessons and travel time with his wife, a longtime local teacher.
"Between my wife and I, we can't walk through Mount Kisco without someone noticing us," he said. "Policemen, firemen, garbage men, people who work in the stores. We know probably more than 50 percent of population collectively."
