Dr. A. James Mamary, the Wynnewood pulmonologist who co-founded the Shortridge Memorial Park Arboretum with his wife and spent more than three decades at Temple University as a student, fellow, professor and physician, died July 9 of cholangiocarcinoma. He was 59.

Known to family and friends as James, Dr. Mamary left a mark on Lower Merion that extends well beyond his medical career. He and his wife, CeliaSue, transformed a section of the 12.3-acre Shortridge Park on Shortridge Drive between Remington Road and East Wynnewood Road into a registered arboretum, coordinating all plans with the township arborist and park commissioner. The ArbNet Morton Register formally recognized the arboretum in 2025, and it operates today with an all-volunteer staff through the Shortridge Civic Association.

That work earned the couple a 2024 "Go for the Green" community service award from the Lower Merion and Narberth Environmental Advisory Councils and Shade Tree Commissions, according to Patch.

At Temple, Dr. Mamary served as program director of the Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship beginning in 2006. He treated thousands of patients, mentored hundreds of physicians and authored more than 60 peer-reviewed publications. Philadelphia Magazine named him a Top Doctor in Pulmonary Disease repeatedly from 2018 through 2026.

"It's been 120 to 145 patients, individual patients that we've been able to help every year," Dr. Mamary told CBS News Philadelphia in April 2024, when Temple Health celebrated 40 years of organ transplants by hosting 185 transplant recipients at a Phillies game. "That's really the aim here, is to add years of life to patients who otherwise wouldn't have that opportunity."

Gerard J. Criner, chair of Temple's Department of Thoracic Medicine and Surgery, said in a tribute published in the Philadelphia Inquirer that Dr. Mamary's patients loved him not only for his clinical skills but for the warmth and humanity he brought to every encounter.

Before medicine, Dr. Mamary earned a bachelor's degree in art and psychology from Haverford College and a master's in anthropology from the College of William and Mary. He met CeliaSue Jaffe in class at Haverford; they married in 1996 and raised two daughters, HannahRose and LilyRuth, in Wynnewood.

He built an 18-foot mahogany canoe by hand in his in-laws' basement, hiked Vermont's entire 272-mile Long Trail, won masters bicycling championship races, and painted and sculpted throughout his life.

Diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma in 2020, Dr. Mamary continued treating patients, teaching and publishing research for six years. Many of the Temple colleagues he had mentored became his caregivers.

Private services have been held. Donations in his memory may be made to the Albert James Mamary Memorial Fund at the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation (give.cholangiocarcinoma.org/fundraiser/7367209). Neighbors interested in continuing his local legacy can volunteer as "Friends of Shortridge Park" through the Shortridge Civic Association.