Dr. Leo Edward Kreuz (85) passed away at home on New Year's Day, 2023, in the company of family and friends. He was born December 12, 1937, in Stambaugh, MI to Faye E. Sicotte and Leo T. Kreuz. Leo grew up in Chisholm, MN on the Iron Range, where he met his first wife Shirley Rapko.
After preparing at Chisholm Senior High School in Chisholm, MN, Leo, majoring in Biochemical Sciences, graduated with an A.B. cum laude from Harvard College. He went on to Johns Hopkins Medical School, receiving his M.D. in 1964. Afterwards, Leo moved to New York City for a residency at Payne Whitney (now) Weill Cornell Medical Center and was awarded a graduate fellowship at Rockefeller University in New York. During the Vietnam War, he was a Major in the Medical Corps for the United States Army and worked in Washington D. C. at the Walter Reed Medical Center as a research psychiatrist.
Research was not a place for Leo's gregarious nature, and he turned to clinical care, spending most of his professional life seeing patients. He became the Chairman of Psychiatry at the Washington D.C. Hospital Center, where he helped to establish some of their specialty mental health clinics.
Leo married Linda Zemke, and they moved to New Mexico, a state he loved. For over twenty years, he saw hundreds of veterans at the Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center in Albuquerque. Leo also served for several years on the former New Mexico Veterans Service Commission. Dr. Kreuz was a lifetime member of the American Psychiatric Association and an avid reader and follower of new medical techniques and pharmacological options that could help his patients.
Leo loved his family, friends, and pets. He enjoyed music, history books, skiing, sailing, hiking, and traveling. He is survived by two daughters, Elizabeth Earley (Matthew) of Wellesley, Massachusetts, Christina Kreuz, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, two grandchildren, William and Caroline Earley, as well as many extended family members and dear friends.
In lieu of flowers, his family requests that contributions be made to the New Mexico Alliance for the Mentally Ill.
