Quy Vi Tran Lam, DO, 66, passed on Friday, May 22nd, surrounded by his wife and children.  Van Steenhuyse-Teahen Funeral Home is caring for Quy and his family.

Quy was born in Da Nang, Vietnam, the youngest and funniest of five children. He turned 15 years old on a boat fleeing from the collapse of South Vietnam. He made the trip with his siblings – forced to leave their parents in their home country. As a refugee, he was separated from his brother and sisters and ultimately placed with a family through Iowa’s resettlement program in Bettendorf, IA where he learned English while completing high school. He pursued a bachelors of arts at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, IA where he studied biology and chemistry, and met his wife of 33 years. Prior to attending medical school, Quy went to the University of Iowa and completed graduate work in religion purely for the sake of learning, but declined to write a thesis; he was awarded a second bachelors.

Despite a comical history of childhood truancy, he earned a Doctor of Osteopathy at University of Osteopathic Medicine and Health Sciences in 1989. He completed an internship at Olympia Fields Osteopathic Hospital in 1990 and Family Practice Residency in Cedar Rapids in 1993, after which he practiced Family Medicine in Benton County. He completed his career in Urgent Care in Cedar Rapids and retired in 2020. Quy felt healing was dependent on the relationship between doctor and patient, and based his practice on healing the whole person, not just their symptoms.

In 2000, he purchased a piece of land and designed his family’s permanent home – as well as several iconic benches – which became a lab, sports field, and workshop to support his mission of homeschooling his children with his wife. Besides carpentry, Quy enjoyed playing the violin and taught each of his six children to play as well. He also liked the harmonica a lot, for some reason. He instilled in his children an appreciation and joy of physical fitness and a love of nature; over the 26 years managing the land, he planted hundreds of trees with the help of his family. He often referred to himself as the Lorax.

Quy loved his family - as a whole unit, and dearly as individuals - and was deeply proud of his wife, all of his children, and grandson. “Papa," “Pop," “Pop-o," or “Doc," as he was called by his children, was especially playful with young kids and was beloved by his nieces, nephews, and grandchild. Chief among his children’s fond memories as a family are summer biking trips, “anti-nerd training," violin duets, rousing rounds of Redlight Greenlight and Chunkit Mouse at the park, bird watching, “just being," and annual trips to Sanibel Island. Quy had a widely recognized sense of humor (most concentrated at Christmas) that was deeply embraced by his family. As a non-native English speaker, he never quite mastered rhyming words (a deficiency he passed on to exactly twenty percent of his children) or the cadence of limericks to the immense delight of his kids.

He lived a life committed to principle and eschewed ceremony for ceremony’s sake. He was known for his discipline, work ethic, intrinsic motivation, humor, and for being an extraordinary provider for his family – a role he took extremely seriously. His strong will bordered on stubbornness; if he decided to do something, he did it. Similarly, if he decided not to do something, he wouldn’t. Quy had no patience for rules for the sake of rules (“Is it a just law, or just [a] law?") and navigated most bureaucratic systems in a way that made his stance on the matter clear.

Quy carried a practical, unflinching understanding of his own mortality. He would playfully remind his kids, “we all gonna die," often prompting the equally playful retort from one of his children, “I'm not gonna die." Far from being morbid, this lighthearted acceptance of mortality fueled his deep reflections on meaning, life, and how we ought to live. He had an entire bookcase filled with books on religion, philosophy, ethics, child-rearing, and health. Whenever discussing topics of importance, he would always bring the conversation back to how an individual engages with the issue. To him, it never mattered if an individual action seemed insignificant in the grand aggregate, or what anyone else was choosing to do. The integrity of doing the right thing as an individual was what mattered most.

He is preceded in death by his daughter, Julia, and parents, Quang Thi Vi and Bao Van Tran Lam.

He is survived by his wife, Patrice, and his children David (Yijie Wu), Audrey (Facundo Lucci), Samuel, Emerson, Ingrid, and grandson, Aurelo; as well as three sisters, a brother, and many, many nieces and nephews.

If you would like to honor Quy’s memory, enjoy a vegan meal (as many as you want, really) or plant a tree.

Period. End dictation.

Condolences for the family may be left at www.teahenfuneralhome.com.