Clara H. Kriss, M. D.

May 29, 1913 - March 2, 2014

Dr. Clara Kriss, 100, of Clark Meadows, Canandaigua, formerly of Geneva, died Sunday, March 2, 2014 at the M.M. Ewing Continuing Care Center in Canandaigua. Clara Kriss was born in 1913 in Lucerne, Switzerland, to Albert Schubiger and Ida Bigler Schubiger. Having finished her secondary education in Lucerne, she completed Medical School at the University of Zurich. In 1940, while working at the Lucerne Cantonal Hospital, she became acquainted with a colleague, Dr. Nathan Krisnapoller, who had been forced to leave his medical studies at the University of Vienna in 1938 when the Nazis annexed Austria, and who subsequently completed his education in Basel, Switzerland, in 1939. They would eventually marry. During World War II, when many Swiss physicians were commited to military duties, Clara took over several practices, making the rounds in various rural districts at a difficult time when neutral Switzerland was surrounded by Axis territory. After the war, Clara worked for a time as a physician doing relief work with the British Red Cross in Gelsenkirchen, located in what is now the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, and at the time part of the British zone of occupation. Returning to Switzerland, she pursued her chosen specialty of Pediatrics at the Children's Hospital in Basel, working under the noted pediatrician Ernst Freudenberg. Among her acquaintances in Lucerne in her youth were Hans Erni, a well known Swiss artist, who is still productive at age 105, and a friend and school classmate, the late Anita Guanella, whose husband, the late Albert Hofmann, is best known as the discoverer of the drug LSD. In 1949 Clara came to the United States, arriving in New York City to join Dr. Krisnapoller, who had arrived there two years earlier and was working as a physician in Queens. He had by this time shortened his surname to "Kriss". They were married in New York upon her arrival. Shortly thereafter, they moved to Crow Agency, Montana, where Clara assisted her husband, who worked for the U.S. Government as a physician at the Crow Indian Reservation. In 1951, they moved to Custer, South Dakota, where he became the town's physician, with Clara assisting. In 1953 they moved to Charlottesvile, Virginia, where Nathan completed a residency in Radiology at the University of Virginia. Nathan and Clara came to Geneva, New York, in 1954, where Nathan took a position as Radiologist. He eventually retired as Chief of Radiology in 1978. Clara, between raising three children, worked in various capacities as a physician in Rochester in the 1960's and at the Rushville Clinic in the 1970's. Clara was deeply interested in nature, and became a student of the local plants and animals. Fascinated with birds and their songs, she was happiest hiking through local woods and scanning shorelines for wildlife. She is still remembered for her enthusiastic pusuit of physical activity, bicycling through the city of Geneva, kayaking on Seneca Lake and cross country skiing, all of which she continued until about age 90. After being somewhat limited by physical issues, she spent her final 10 years at Clark Meadows in Canandaigua, where she was still known for her determination to stay as physically active as possible. She is survived by her sons Robert of Geneva and David of Newark, and a number of nieces and nephews in Switzerland and their children and grandchildren. She was predeceased by her husband Nathan and her son Peter. In accordance with her wishes, no memorial observances have been scheduled.