Island Icon, Global Heart: Lou Ingrisano wasn’t just a person, he was a force

Carrie Jones

Aug 06, 2025

BAR HARBOR—Dr. Lou, Big Daddy Lou (BDL), LuLu, also known as Lou Ingrisano didn’t want an obituary, his wife, Cyndi said.

That’s not what this is.

An obituary is facts and figures strung together to list accomplishments.

Dr. Lou? He had too many accomplishments to list.

Dr. Lou? He impacted too many lives across multiple continents to ever come close to having them all listed.

Dr. Lou? He was so much bigger than that.

Some people can’t be contained by expectations, by life, and certainly not by obituaries, and this piece about Dr. Lou is something Cyndi wanted us to write.

It’s not an obituary. Lou’s life can’t be shown that way; that’s because Lou’s life was a lot like him; it can’t be contained. It was just too big, too impactful, too full of meaning.

Dr. Mary Dudzik who worked with Lou for years said Friday that Lou was about charm, intelligence, skill, but also something deeper.

“We spent every day with him,” she said of the time that he was a physician assistant in the office of Dr. Dudzik’s and Dr. David Painter’s Family Health Center.

She said that Lou was always thinking, “‘I need to do more. I need to do more.’ And he did.”

Lou Ingrisano’s life was defined by doing more, helping more, being more.

“He was always looking for something more to do, some way to help,” Dr. Dudzik said. “He put people at ease.”

He had a certain empathy that allowed him to size up a situation and let him put people of any age at ease.

One time at the practice, she said, “he walked in and could see that this three year old was kind of afraid. Lou was eating a banana.”

He offered it to the child.

“The child took it. That made everyone in the room see this was not that big a deal,” she asked. “Who does that?”

Lou did.

Dr. Dudzik said that what matters to her is that Lou knew how much he mattered, how much good he did, what a difference he made in the lives so many people all around the world, and especially here on Mount Desert Island.

“He had this sort of personality that was funny, but when he came to healthcare, he was really serious,” she said. “I really feel sorry for the people who didn’t get a chance to meet him. They missed out on one of the best humans ever.”

So many agreed with Dr. Dudzik’s assessment of how special Lou was.

Victoria Eaton, a nursing supervisor who has been with Mount Desert Island Hospital for over 30 years said that she worked with Lou for a long time.

“Lou Ingrisano, such an amazing inspiration to so many,” Eaton said. “Your compassion touched the lives of everyone you came into contact with. I’m grateful you were my partner in crime, my mentor, my counselor, my confidant, my adviser, and most importantly, my friend in life. I will treasure the memories, your infectious laugh, and your guidance for the rest of my days. Your legacy will live on, your impact will endure, and the memories you shared with so many of your colleagues and friends will forever be treasured. Your dedication to your patients and this community will always be remembered.”

“Oh, Lou Ingrisano, I will miss you forever,” Marianne Cargill wrote on Facebook. “We laughed, we talked and we had so much fun.”

He was, according to Kate Bartlett Worcester on social media, “my forever trusted advisor and dear friend.”

When Lou went into hospice in mid July, he had Cyndi post for him on Facebook to tell the community.

He said that his previous six weeks “have proven to be quite the adventure. I have developed nonsurgical endocarditis, involving two valves, bridging an abscess on my valve.”

He was having embolic strokes.

“So it looks,” he wrote, “like Elvis is going to leave the building.”

He did, but he didn’t.

When you make such an impact, when you change lives over and over again, you don’t really ever leave. Lou made that kind of impact—the kind of impact where you never leave the building because you helped build them, piece by piece, person by person, institution by institution.

“I am at peace (with) where this is going, and I wish all my friends good thoughts and I will miss you all,” Lou said. “This is not a pity party. I’m just putting some factual information out there. It’s been a good run and thank you all. I shall miss you….”

Lou wouldn’t allow pity parties for himself. That wasn’t what he was about. He was about bigger things. A lot of those things had to do with love.

Dr. Lou loved his patients. He loved fishing. He loved animals and especially dogs. He loved playing pickleball with his girls. He loved and adored Cyndi. He loved his family. He filled his life with love.

And he was surrounded by love, too, Cyndi said.

That’s important. That’s something that she wants everyone to know.

Lou was surrounded by that same kind of big, compassionate, funny, straight-forward love that he gave to his community.

Lou and Cyndi married in 2018. She married a man who checked in on friends, who would say something funny in a meeting, who was independent in his career choices and care, taking responsibility for every patient with a confidence that was bigger than the examining room.

“He was kind, compassionate, and had an amazing sense of humor, he will be missed by all who knew him. Our community is diminished by his passing,” said former patient and former town councilor Matt Hochman.

Lou was a man who would yell at a soccer referee if he didn’t think a call was fair. He was a dad who cheered loudly and with a bellow for his kids as they played. And he’d do it for other people’s kids, too.

Sue Bussa wrote, “His heart and mission was to give and serve. I cherish our trips to Rwanda and Cameroon. He taught me the patient morning walk where he would go out and see all the patients and mentally assess who needed the most urgent care. The impression he left on the patients and team members is long standing.”

“We are deeply saddened by the passing of Lou, a long-time and cherished physician assistant at Mount Desert Island Hospital,” said the hospital’s executive director Chrissi Maguire. “Lou was an extraordinary member of our care team whose insight, compassion, and unwavering dedication made a lasting difference in the lives of so many. He brought not only clinical excellence, but also warmth, humor, and a deeply thoughtful presence to his work. Lou’s commitment to his patients and our community was evident in all he did. He will be profoundly missed by his colleagues, his patients, and all who had the privilege to know him.”

Lou was the first physician assistant at Mount Desert Island Hospital. When he retired in 2018, he wrote, “The end is near…. I’ve had a long, successful, and satisfying run here in the hospital. My journey started in 1971 or 1972, but who is counting, as a lab tech and peaked as senior physician assistant. I appreciate all the opportunities and responsibilities offered me, the original PA at MDIH.”

He said he left without regrets. He left with “a sense of pride in my role helping the hospital serve the community with quality and compassion. So farewell as I ride my blue Subaru into the sunset with a smile on my face, a check for my earned time in my pocket, and a beautiful new wife at my side, and a 165-pound pup to boot. Farewell.”

Lou didn’t just take care of those of us on the island. He went on 11 medical missions. He saved lives on other continents and here on Mount Desert Island. He also impacted lives all around him by being unabashedly himself.

He gave patients his phone number in case they needed him after hours. He wanted to be there for them. Always.

The world noticed.

In 2002, Lou was honored as the 2002 Rural Physician Assistant of the Year by the American Academy of Physician Assistants. During a ceremony in Boston, with over 7,000 attending, Lou received a $5,000 award along with the honor of the Paragon Award. He gave half to the MDI YMCA Scholarship Fund. The other half he used to finance a two-week trip to Mongolia where he gave medical care to people who had a hard time making it to regular health care.

Before that, back in 1998, he received a grant and started the Outer Island Initiative. He’d go to the outer islands in Maine two times a year to help islanders. It was right when telecommunications technology was starting in health care. The program would provide needed healthcare to those who lived on the islands through clinics, visits, and telecommunication visits.

“There is still a significant portion of the outer island population that cannot or will not make the effort to travel for regular health care,” Lou told Mark Good, writing for the Mount Desert Islander in 2002. “So, we go to them.”

“We go to them.”

Dr. Lou spent a lot of time going to them. He travelled to South America; he served as the Somesville Fire Companies’ medical director. He spent three weeks in 2011 in Libya, which was war-torn as rebels rose up against forces that were supporting Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the former leader of the country. Bombs were going off all around them. Buildings were shells, just remnants.

“Your anxiety is huge,” he told Mark Good of the Mount Desert Islander. “You don’t feel it until you get out of the zone.”

It was pure combat medicine.

He told Good, “it was unlike anything I’ve seen before.”

Lou healed people in an abandoned warehouse. He healed people in tents. He healed people in “a ransacked home” and a date and pomegranate farm.

He healed people.

He went to them.

Lou wasn’t just about medicine. He was about family and friends and dogs. He served on the Mount Desert School Board. He served on the MDI Regional Health Care Corporation Board of Directors. He coached kids playing basketball.

He cared, but he didn’t just care; he cared passionately and he made a difference, shoring up people, helping them sturdy themselves, fixing the wounds he saw.

In 1995 he argued for Mount Desert to not leave the MDI school district, making news stories. In 2004, he decided to run the New York City Marathon to raise money for cancer research. One columnist said Lou was “preparing to run, walk or crawl” as long as he could raise money for Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He ended up running 12 marathons in his life.

Lou was a fighter too. It takes fortitude to run a marathon, and it takes fortitude to do martial arts at the level Lou did.

“It was a huge part of his life, his mental health, his bond and connection to the community. He was a Nidan, a second degree black belt,” his daughter Tonya said. “As young kids, my brothers and I always thought it was so crazy that we would be out shopping and men and women would be bowing to him right in the grocery store aisle.”

Liz Mead Lawrence said that she’d trained with Lou for forty years.

“Martial arts,” she wrote, “creates a strong bond, one of blood, sweat and tears. He was one of three people who taught the women’s self-defense class I took that started my own martial arts career, so many decades ago now.”

Lou gave Lawrence her white belt. Then he gave her yellow belt. Ten years later, he’d stop in at her school.

“He would patch me up on the many times I needed it and sprang me from one or more hospital stays. He was a member in good standing in my ‘suck it up and tape it up’ club,” Lawrence said.

She also credited Lou with saving her life while she was trying to deal with her mother’s illness.

“He always gave selflessly,” she said. “He was a great PA, a stellar friend and brother, a wondrous father, one of my personal heroes, and an amazing human….What a huge difference he made in this world. This world has lost yet another beacon of light, a lighthouse, in these all too dark times. Today, and always, I will sing your honor song, Lou, with my hand held high in a sacred manner. I will not be alone in that song, for many will join me in its chorus. Godspeed, brother. You will be missed.”

Here’s the thing: Lou Ingrisano went to them in so many ways: running, advocacy, coaching, laughing, mentoring, late night calls to make sure the people he loved were okay.

He went to them over and over again, be they down the street or halfway around the world.

At the time of the Paragon Award, Dr. Dudzik told Good of Lou, “He has an uncanny ability to read people and to gain understanding of the real issues, the real reasons for seeking care.”

“I like small towns,” Lou told him, “because they enable you to see people as more than patients. I don’t treat patients; I treat people.”

Lou Ingrisano saw people and when he had to, he always went to them.

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Photos courtesy of Cyndi and Tonya Ingrisano.

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