Claire Montaigne, M.D., R ’20, was a lot of things to a lot of people.
To her patients, she was a family medicine practitioner at OHSU who strived to ensure every person she treated felt seen and cared for. To her students, she was an assistant professor of family medicine in the OHSU School of Medicine who exuded passion for educating the next generation of providers. Her fellow residents at OHSU remember her as reliable, present and thoughtful, someone who endeavored to care for the most vulnerable.
Moreover, Montaigne was a daughter, a wife, a mom and a friend. She was humble, compassionate, determined and generous — someone whose depth of love for people was enough to change the world.
Tragically, Montaigne’s life and career were cut too short when she passed away from stage IV metastatic melanoma on Sept. 21, 2022. She was 33.
“What a beloved mother, wife, daughter and doctor she was,” said her father, Fen Montaigne. “She lit up her world.”
“She really was a wonderful person,” said Matthew Baer, Montaigne’s husband. “She was always the first to offer help, to be there for others.”
“She was so dependable, so fun to be around,” said Brit Nilsen, M.D., R ’20, a close friend of and fellow OHSU resident with Montaigne. “Spunky, energetic, always down for adventures. She would routinely host everyone over for dinners in her home. She was the kind of person you could talk to about anything and saw and valued individual uniqueness.”
In honor of Montaigne’s life and all-too-brief impact, family and friends have established a fund within the Department of Family Medicine. The Claire Hays Montaigne Endowment will forever carry on Montaigne’s legacy through an award to those who exemplify the traits she was known for — dedication to full-spectrum family medicine, leadership during residency, kindness to patients and colleagues, and commitment to improving health care access for all.
“She wasn’t done teaching; she wasn’t done being an example,” said Nilsen, a primary care doctor at Kaiser Permanente. “She is the epitome of what we all wish family medicine could be. In thinking about the fund, it’s to help create more family doctors that could be even a tiny bit like her.”
“We miss her. We think about her every hour of every day. We also keep thinking when things get difficult, how would Claire want us to go on? I think she’d want us to do just what we’re doing to honor her life.”
Fen Montaigne
Montaigne was born in Philadelphia and for the first few years of her life lived In Moscow, Russia, with her parents, Fen Montaigne and Laurie Hays, who were correspondents for newspapers in the U.S. She spent the rest of her childhood living in Pelham, New York, just outside of New York City.
Growing up, Montaigne demonstrated a knack for math and science. She earned a Jefferson Scholarship and attended the University of Virginia, where she met her future husband, Baer, and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in human biology in 2011. By then, she knew she wanted to be a doctor. In 2016, she and Baer married, and she graduated from the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Shortly thereafter, she began her residency at OHSU.
“When she visited OHSU, she just fell in love,” Fen Montaigne said. “She loved the people, loved the feel, and she loved that it had a really top-notch family medicine program.”
Montaigne developed her passion for serving the most vulnerable patients at OHSU, and by her fourth year, she was chief resident. Her profound care for her patients was matched by the support and encouragement she gave her peers.
“It comes down to viewing people as real, as a whole human,” Nilsen said. “She always offered so much love to people.”
“With fellow residents, she’d always volunteer to take shifts that needed to be covered, was always there to help others,” Baer said. “People really looked at her as a guidepost.”
Montaigne was offered a position at OHSU before residency ended in spring 2020. She and Baer welcomed their daughter, Charlotte, on May 16, 2020, and graduated from the OHSU residency program at the end of June. Days later, she was diagnosed with stage IV metastatic melanoma.
For a time, Montaigne juggled her new career and motherhood with her treatment, often caring for patients and going in for cancer treatments on the same day before going home to be with her family.
“She didn’t want the cancer to define her,” Baer said. “She didn’t want it to get in the way of having a normal life.”
Despite the treatment, however, Montaigne’s cancer continued progressing. After she died, there were celebration of life services in Portland and New York. Between both, nearly 500 people attended. Seeing the people whose lives Montaigne touched inspired her parents to establish the fund for OHSU residents.
“I hope it is an inspiration to people who receive this,” Fen Montaigne said. “We never know what life is going to throw at us. We, in many ways, don’t control our fates. We love Claire, we miss her, we think about her every hour of every day. We also keep thinking when things get difficult, how would Claire want us to go on? I think she’d want us to do just what we’re doing to honor her life.”
