Pioneering neuropsychiatrist dies at 102
By GuestDr. Shirley Ferguson Rayport, a pioneering neuropsychiatrist, dedicated professor, and beloved mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, passed away peacefully in her sleep in Canton on September 17, 2025. She was 102 years old.
Dr. Shirley Ferguson Rayport (Beverly Hall photo)
Shirley’s long and fulfilling life was defined by intellectual curiosity, compassion for others, a love of music and the arts, and an unwavering devotion to her family and profession. She was the loving and devoted mother of three children, Stephen (Marcia Kalin) of New York, Jeffrey (Hillary Hedges) of Boston and Nantucket, and Jennifer (Andrei Rabodzeenko) of Chicago; a proud grandmother of Ilana, Yael, Blake, Abe, and Milo; and great-grandmother of Ella.
Born in Syracuse, New York, on March 9, 1923, to Solomon and Ida Shapero Ferguson, Shirley Martha Ferguson was the youngest of three daughters. A gifted violinist, she performed throughout her youth with her pianist sister Dena as part of the Ferguson Trio, cultivating a lifelong love of classical music. Initially drawn to a career in music, Shirley ultimately chose medicine, earning her medical degree from Syracuse University College of Medicine (now SUNY Upstate Medical University). She began her residency in obstetrics and gynecology at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children but later redirected her path to psychiatry — a bold move for a young woman physician in the 1940s — and trained at the U.S. Veterans Administration Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, and at McGill University in Montreal. At McGill, she was exposed to an emerging brain-based understanding of psychiatry that emphasized scientific rigor, clinical observation, and empathy.
In 1950, she met neurosurgeon Dr. Mark Rayport, who was then a resident at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. They married six months later, beginning a lifelong personal and professional partnership that produced groundbreaking research in epilepsy and neuropsychiatry. Shirley used her maiden name professionally and was known as Dr. Shirley M. Ferguson. Together, the Rayports pioneered an innovative, multidisciplinary approach to epilepsy treatment, combining neurology, psychiatry, and neurosurgery long before such collaboration became standard. Their work at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and later at the Medical College of Ohio (now the University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences) helped redefine care for patients with epilepsy and earned international recognition.
In Toledo, Shirley emerged as a leader in the developing field of neuropsychiatry and became known for her humane, whole-person approach to mental health care. As director of the Medical College Unit at the Toledo Mental Health Center from 1971 to 1982, she championed an interdisciplinary model that integrated pharmacology, psychotherapy, and creative therapies such as gardening, dance, and theater. She encouraged her patients to engage their minds and bodies through purposeful activity — whether growing flowers, performing in psychodrama, or pursuing vocational skills. She often reminded her students that beneath every psychiatric symptom was a human being striving for meaning and dignity. She was tireless in her belief that recovery required community, empathy, and opportunity — values she modeled in her teaching and practice. Under her leadership, the Toledo Mental Health Center became a model of compassionate, patient-centered care, even as national policy shifted toward deinstitutionalization.
Education was central to Shirley’s mission. She trained generations of medical students and residents, developing a standardized format for patient evaluation that integrated psychiatric and neurological insights. She exposed her students to the legal and ethical dimensions of psychiatry, organizing joint conferences with law faculty and bringing law students into the hospital to observe real-world cases. Her work helped transform often-adversarial encounters between medicine and law into collaboration and mutual respect. Following Mark’s passing in 2003, Shirley created the Mark Rayport and Shirley Ferguson Rayport Fellowship in Epilepsy Surgery at the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) at McGill University, supporting the training of young neurosurgeons in epilepsy research and care. Even in retirement, she continued to write and publish, contributing to books and journals on the mind-brain relationship and the history of medicine.
In 2017, at age 94, Shirley moved to Orchard Cove, a Harvard-affiliated retirement community known for its vibrant intellectual life. There she opened a joyous new chapter — joining book clubs, volunteering in the library, attending lectures and concerts, and regularly traveling into Boston for performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the American Repertory Theater. In her later years, Shirley continued to work, pursuing writing and research, including extensions of studies begun in the 1970s. (One major project was a longitudinal tracking study of epilepsy patients she and Mark had treated during their years in Ohio.) She published a volume of collected research papers with her co-authors, Mark (posthumously) and their longtime neuro-nurse Carolyn A. Schell, titled “Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and the Mind-Brain Relationship: A New Perspective” (Elsevier, 2006). Shirley and Carolyn also published “Dostoevsky’s Epilepsy: A New Approach to Retrospective Diagnosis” (Epilepsy & Behavior, 2011). Also in 2011, Shirley and three MCO colleagues realized Mark’s dream of a book documenting the founding of their medical school in first-person narratives: A Community of Scholars: Recollections of the Early Years of the Medical College of Ohio (University of Toledo Press, 2011).
For the past 20 years, Shirley spent summers and holidays with her son Jeffrey and his wife Hillary’s family in their home on Nantucket. She and Mark first came to the island in the early 1950s, drawn to its charm as a fishing village and artists’ colony. After they started a family, they returned nearly every summer. The island became one of the great joys of her life — a place that combined her love of family, music, nature, and architecture. She cherished her time there, relished the island’s beauty, its arts and culture, and its sense of community. Her days were filled with beach outings, picnics, theater, lectures, and family gatherings. The highlight of every summer was when all her children and grandchildren came to visit, filling the house with laughter and conversation.
She will be remembered not only as a pioneer in psychiatry and neuropsychiatry but also as a woman of integrity, warmth, joie de vivre, and enduring vitality — someone who embraced life’s richness and looked to the future with optimism and grace. She leaves behind a legacy of scientific discovery, humane innovation, and family devotion that continues to inspire all who knew her.
Shirley is buried beside her beloved husband and partner, Mark, at the Toledo Hebrew Cemetery in Rossford, Ohio, not far from their former home in Perrysburg, Ohio, where they raised their family and lived for nearly 50 years.
Those wishing to honor Shirley’s memory may consider a gift in her name to Friends of McGill University, supporting the Mark Rayport and Shirley Ferguson Rayport Fellowship in Epilepsy Surgery at the MNI; or to the Orchard Cove Enrichment Fund, benefiting her community at Orchard Cove (1 Del Pond Dr., Canton, MA 02021).
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