Dr. Frank Iula, Mt. Ephraim Family Physician Succumbs from Prostate Cancer
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
A Funeral Mass was held at St. Rose of Lima Church, Haddon
Heights for Frank A. Iula, 82, of Haddon Heights, a family physician in Mount
Ephraim for more than 52 years, died of prostate cancer March 7, 2009 at his
home.
Dr. Iula continued to see patients while battling cancer and Parkinson’s disease until falling in August. He had hoped to recover and return to work and refused to retire, said his daughter, Maria Bezich.
Dr. Iula decided to be a doctor after his mother died of a long illness when he was 8. He was raised by an aunt and uncle in Vineland and graduated from Vineland High School.
During World War II, Dr. Iula served in the Army as a guard at a facility for German prisoners of war in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. The Germans were so grateful for his compassion, his daughter said, that they made him a new uniform.
Dr. Iula earned a bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University then medical school at the University of Bologna – and learned Italian while earning his degree.
For more than 30 years, Dr. Iula was a deacon at St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church assisting with liturgies, distributing Communion, giving homilies at Mass, presiding of marriages, and baptizing the faithful. In the 1970s, he and his wife, Rose DiToma Iula helped establish the Catholic Pentecosta movement in Camden County. She died in 1992.
Dr. Iula enjoyed golf and had been a member of Tavistock Country Club in Haddonfield for 40 years.
His greatest passion was his physically and mentally disabled son, John, whom he cared for at home for 46 years. Tending to his son’s needs, Dr. Iula rarely got more than three or four hours sleep, his daughter said.
Dr. Iula is also survived by another son, Frank; daughter Maria Bezich; three sisters; and three grandsons.
Burial was in Sacred Heart Cemetery, Vineland.
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