Throughout their 65-year journey together, Dr. John Gallup, affectionately known as Bill to locals in the community, and his wife Jean have lived in locales throughout the world, raised a family, traveled and given tirelessly to their local communities. “We still share the same core values after all these years,” says Jean, who raised the couple’s children while her husband was the community’s revered-and very busy- pediatrician. “We all experience challenges, but…I have been very lucky to have experienced life with him.”
There is something deeply moving about dedicating your life to fulfilling a need to help people – despite the sacrifices that are required. Dr. Gallup served in a pediatric practice in Canaan and Sharon for 30-years, establishing himself as a beloved pediatrician who made house calls and took care of children across the tri-corner area. “I spent time traveling to Canaan, Falls Village, Salisbury and Cornwall to visit my patients. I was on-call most of the time, it was easy to feel a bit overwhelmed, but I couldn’t slow down just to skip night calls.”
“I had a list of phone numbers for people to find him,” Jean muses jokingly of her husband’s time on the road while she stayed home raising their three children. “I will never fault him because what he was doing was such a worthy cause and I did not want to give up any personal care of my children, so I was happy to stay home.” Despite her commitment to being home for their children, Jean did return to a career after raising her family; she joined the advertising department of the Lakeville Journal in the 70s and worked at The Hotchkiss School in the early 1980s, which allowed her to contribute to her children’s education which was paramount to the Gallups. “Education was the priority with our children, so we lived modestly for many years to make sure they had the very best opportunities.”
Bill and Jean first met while studying at Tufts Universityin Massachusetts and were married in May of 1955. After Dr. Gallup retired in late 1992, the couple traveled the world including a three-month stay in Haiti where Bill continued to use his pediatric expertise to help local Haitian communities.
“I can almost recite the alphabet when it comes to the number of countries we have been lucky enough to visit,” says Jean of their many journeys around the globe. “We’ve backpacked around the world and visited beautiful places in New Delhi, Scandinavia, Croatia, China, Australia, New Zealand and Nepal. Without a doubt though, some of our most memorable times together were spent while we were stationed just outside of Tokyo in Japan when Bill worked as a doctor for the US Army.”
Along with his thirty years of service on the active medical staff at Sharon Hospital, Dr. Gallup also served a term as Chief of Medical Staff in both the 1970s and 1980s. Even after his retirement, Bill remained an influential community leader serving on several local non-profit boards including the Taconic Learning Center as well as The Foundation for Community Health.
For the past three and a half years, Bill and Jean have lived at Noble Horizons where Dr. Gallup’s parents also lived. “Our time here has been a wonderful enhancement for our social lives,” says Jean of their new neighborhood community. “Living here means the opportunity for encountering new people all the time. Meeting different people with unique stories is one of the very best aspects of living here.” Jean and Bill have lived rich lives and impacted countless others throughout their journey together. “Things are always changing and we both have faced our share of unique challenges,” says Jean. “I cannot imagine a better choice for a partner in life.”