Edward Terry Davison, former Valley Stream cardiologist, dies

Edward Terry Davison, a cardiologist who ran a busy medical practice in Valley Stream for nearly 40 years while contributing chapters to three medical textbooks and publishing more than 75 research papers about heart disease, died Monday in Jupiter, Florida, following complications from a stroke. He was 81.

An energetic doctor who began his hospital rounds before 6 a.m. each day, Davison created one of the first cardiac rehabilitation centers in New York in the 1970s — Cardiometrics in Manhattan, said his son-in-law, Gil Ben-Ami of Hewlett.

In 2001, Davison received a commendation letter from President George W. Bush for his leadership in medicine and as a humanitarian, according to Lindsey Davison, his wife of 27 years.

Edward Davison grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and joined the Norwegian Merchant Marines in search of adventure after he graduated early from high school, his wife said. He then worked as a school chef to pay his way through Wake Forest University, with his undergraduate work earning him induction in the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

After graduating from the university’s Bowman Gray School of Medicine, he interned at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn.

Davison served as a Navy medical officer from 1960 to 1963, followed by a cardiac fellowship at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.

He and his former wife Carol moved to Valley Stream in 1965 and established his cardiology practice. He was affiliated with Franklin Hospital and North Shore-Long Island Jewish health systems, and was among a group of doctors recruited in 1978 for the heart center at St. Francis Hospital in Port Washington.

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He retired three years ago and moved with his wife Lindsey to Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

“His loyalty and compassion to his colleagues and his patients was legend,” his wife said in a biography she wrote of her husband. “He made a profound impact on the many lives he touched.”

His son-in-law said Davison was “very quick with a joke and liked to tell the same ones more than once. He had friends from all walks of life. The people he knew and became friends with, many were patients. . . . He wasn’t a biased or judgmental person. Everyone came from an equal playing field with him.”

Besides his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Tracy Ben-Ami, and a son, Marc Davison, of Orange County, California; and two grandchildren.

Davison was buried Wednesday with full military honors at South Florida National Cemetery in Lake Worth, Florida. A memorial service is scheduled Sunday at 11:30 a.m. at Hewlett East Rockaway Jewish Center, 295 Main St., East Rockaway.