Dr. Bendel, I Presume

Being voted a Mpls.St.Paul Magazine Top Doctor more than once by your colleagues is quite an accomplishment. Being voted the honor seventeen times is unheard of—unless you are one of the four full-time physicians in the Bendel clan: Catherine has been named a Top Doctor five times; Anne eight times; Ellen three times; and Ellen’s husband, Michael, was selected for the first time this year. All are highly regarded in the pediatric medical communities: Catherine, forty-eight, is an attending physician on the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the University of Minnesota Children’s Hospital Fairview and an associate professor in the Division of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics, at the University of Minnesota; Anne, forty-six, is a pediatric hematologist/oncologist at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota and director of the neuro-oncology program there; Ellen, forty-one, is in private practice with Minnesota Neonatal Physicians and vice chief of critical care at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota; and Michael, forty-two, is a pediatric nephrologist at University of Minnesota Children’s Hospital Fairview and an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Minnesota.

The “Bendel girls,” as they affectionately call themselves (a fourth sister, Mary, is an American literature professor at McDaniel College in Maryland), got their love of medicine from watching their father, Richard, seventy-three, a highly respected perinatologist now retired, throughout his career. “It wasn’t that he ever said ‘You should be a doctor,’ ” Catherine says. “In fact, I don’t think he ever said that. There was no direct influence. It was all by example.”

“It was obvious growing up in this family that Dad enjoyed what he did and was truly happy doing it,” Ellen says. “I think that without even saying anything, you absorb that.”

The girls chose specialties within pediatric medicine because they enjoyed working with children and families. All attended the College of St. Catherine and all went to medical school at the University of Minnesota. They even had a chance to work together. When Catherine was a supervising resident, Anne was her intern; and when Catherine was on the faculty at the University of Minnesota, Ellen became her fellow. Besides standing out as her sisters, Anne and Ellen were, says Catherine, the best intern and fellow, respectively, she ever had.

Although they do not work together today, they still look to one another for advice. “It is nice that we can help each other,” Anne says of the intellectual and emotional rigors of their professions. “We have either been through it or are going to go through it.”

Having so many doctors in one family can get confusing, but for the Bendel clan it is all part of normal life. “When my daughters were younger, once in a while they would meet someone who would say, ‘Oh, are you Dr. Bendel’s daughter?’ ” Richard explains. “Now I am out, and they say, ‘Oh, are you Dr. Bendel’s father?’ ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘But which Dr. Bendel?’ ”