The first thing you notice upon entering the Cape Cod-style home of Dr. Scott Powell and his wife, Dr. Cynthia Boxrud, is the music room at the front of the house. Dominating the space is a Baldwin baby grand piano’her 50th-birthday present from him a few years back’and on the floor are half a dozen of his guitars. Also eye-catching is the photo of Powell and his rock n’ roll band Sha-Na-Na, taken more than 30 years ago when the group’which sang mostly ‘oldies but goodies”played the Brooklyn Fox Theatre. Powell, who was in the band for 11 years, graduated with a master’s degree in theatre from NYU in 1977 before deciding to go to medical school. Besides being in the short-lived ‘Sha-Na-Na’ syndicated television series (1975), he also appeared in the films ‘Woodstock’ (1970), ‘Grease’ (1978) and ‘Caddyshack’ (1980). In fact, on the day Powell was interviewed by the Palisadian-Post, he had just returned from a ‘Caddyshack’ reunion in Chicago which raised money for the Illinois Military Family Relief Fund. ‘I was happy to be able to participate,’ said the Pacific Palisades resident. ‘And it was nice to see people from that time in my life.’ Ironically, Boxrud was also actively involved in music at one time, including singing backup and playing piano for a band called Short’n Bread. She graduated from the Manhattan School of Music in 1978 as a classically trained pianist before she too decided to become a physician. Music to medicine? Both of them? ‘I was never great in school until I went into medicine, which is where I learned how to get A’s,’ Boxrud explained. ‘I was doing research for a play about doctors, which is what got me interested,’ said Powell in the comfort of their Palisades living room, the turquoise walls covered with the couple’s extensive black-and-white photo collection, which includes a rare still of Marilyn Monroe’working out in a gym. Powell and Boxrud, who met through a mutual friend and knew each other for 10 years before becoming romantically involved, both did their pre-med studies at Columbia University. Powell became an orthopedic surgeon, specializing in sports medicine’a relatively new specialty at the time. He is currently the team physician for the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team (a volunteer position), which will compete in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Powell has also worked with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Lakers and Kings. Having recently retired from Kaiser Permanente, he is now in private practice, doing ‘about 75 percent shoulders, as well as some elbows and knees.’ He shares an office with his wife in Santa Monica. Boxrud, who trained in ophthalmology, is now a plastic surgeon, specializing in the eyes and in reconstructive surgery. Her work ranges from correcting droopy eyelids to removing cancer in the orbital (eye) area to full facelifts. She offers her services free to victims of domestic abuse. After eight years of investing in related medical research Boxrud now has two patents: a special pillow to protect the eye area after surgery and a cream for dark circles. Five years ago she built her own operating room adjacent to her office in the medical building next to St. John’s Medical Center. Her clients come through referrals’most of them wanting basic cosmetic work. ‘As we age, the face starts to deflate, like a balloon.’ Boxrud explained. ‘So I add volume where I can and take away what I can from other parts.’ Asked what she thought about what appear to be extreme makeovers on some celebrities, she said: ‘Personally, I’m a minimalist. I’d rather have patients come back for more than risk going too far. My goal is to keep my patients safe at all costs.’ Boxrud, 54, said she likes to be ‘hands on’ and often makes house calls. She said that for fun one of her favorite things is to ‘jam’ at home with neighbors and friends. And she also enjoys going down to the beach’not to swim but to clean up. ‘Sometimes on the weekends, Scott and I will just go down there with a couple of garbage bags and pick up what we can,’ Boxrud said. While she agrees that Santa Monica Bay is cleaner than it was a few years ago, when medical waste’including hypodermic needles’was found floating in the ocean, Boxrud said there’s still a long way to go. Knowing how much is wasted at the source”our hospitals”her current pet project is collecting this waste, which she said is often ‘perfectly good’ (even though it may have been used or has an expiration date on it) and getting it to where it can be put to good use. She said that, so far, two hospitals have agreed to give her their waste”stuff like sutures and disinfectant”which she immediately sent off to two hospitals, one in El Salvador, the other in Chile. Boxrud said she is working on expanding her program into recycling hospital waste ‘because I know what a difference that waste can make.’ For ‘fun,’ Boxrud recently volunteered to work for three months in the kitchen at the restaurant JiRaff, where she was put to work ‘cutting chickens and chopping vegetables. I learned a lot, like how to work with lobster, for example. There’s actually a lot of similarity between cooking and medicine. Both are about technique.’ The couple decided to move to the Palisades from Westwood with their then young children’Evan, now 20 and a freshman at the University of Colorado, and Jessica, 14, who attends Brentwood School’almost a decade ago after taking part in the town’s Fourth of July Parade. Boxrud, a Girl Scout leader at John Thomas Dye school in Bel-Air, decided that marching in the parade would be a great way for her troop ‘to earn their community service badge. So we built about 20 canoes on our front lawn which the girls pretended to paddle in the parade. We came in second for best float. We were elated,’ Boxrud recalled. She said that the morning of the parade the family also took part in the Will Rogers race and was happily surprised to find that ‘people we didn’t even know would say ‘hello’ to us. The Palisades reminded both Scott and me of the small-town atmosphere we both grew up in.’ Powell was brought up in Chappaqua, New York, where his parents, both 86, still live. Boxrud was raised on a cattle farm in Madelia, Minnesota, that also grew alfalfa and corn. She said that in many ways it was an idyllic life’everything the family ate was organic, she rode horses and she and her sister helped with the chores. Boxrud also learned anatomy from her dad, ‘who would bring home animals injured on the road.’ She would help care for them’foxes, rabbits, squirrels and sometimes cows. They would dissect the ones that didn’t make it to try and figure out what went wrong. Those that survived ‘we returned to the wild,’ she said. Boxrud goes back to the farm two or three times a year. On her most recent visit with her daughter, Jessie, she canned corn and made raspberry jam with her mother, Jean. Boxrud said the first time she ever left home was to attend music school in New York. Then after graduating from medical school in 1986 and spending three more years training to be an eye doctor, she worked at Cornell Medical School caring for children with facial tumors. She and her husband came to L.A. in 1992 after being awarded fellowships: she at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at UCLA; he at Kerlan-Jobe. Both now lecture and teach part-time. Besides teaching, the couple have been on several medical missions: she to Chile (2003) and he to Cuba (2004), where he met Fidel Castro, whose youngest son, Tony, is also an orthopedic surgeon. ‘Five of us had gone to Cuba with 75 boxes of equipment, including some outdated arthroscopic cameras that are used for operations,’ Powell explained. ‘Then Tony said his father would like to meet us. We were with Castro, who I found to be charming and charismatic, for about five hours.’ Powell, 57, said he is planning a mission next year to Haiti. Asked what she expects to be doing in 10 years, Boxrud said ‘Helping out somewhere in South America.’ She never sees herself retiring. ‘As doctors, there are so many ways for us to continue to contribute. In fact, even though we came to medicine late, in some ways I feel like we’re just getting started.’
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