“He was very dedicated to work and to his patients,” Bhangdia said. “You know how people say he was a great doctor? He was a more awesome father. He was an amazing role model for me, my sister, Carol, and my brother, Charles.

“He always had big dreams and was always there for us. I don’t know how he balanced it all. I can’t think of a single moment in our lives when he wasn’t there for us.”

Besides his passion for his patients and his family, Fasano was also remembered for his sense of humor, a trait he kept until the end.

“My dad always loved learning,” Bhangdia added. “He encouraged all three of us to chart our own course, not to necessarily follow in his footsteps but to follow what we were passionate about. That’s what pushed me in my own direction.”

Bhangdia is a pathologist at Evangelical Community Hospital in Lewisburg. Charles Fasano is an emergency room doctor at a hospital in Philadelphia, and Carol Gruber works for Merck Pharmaceuticals.

“He was very proud of his family,” Bhangdia continued. “No matter what we did.”

He was also proud to have been a mentor to so many physicians who came into the area.

“He exemplified what it is to be an ideal physician; he was a role model that centered everything around his patients,” said Dr. Hank Yavorek, a general surgeon who knew Fasano for 18 years.

Yavorek practices surgery at Sunbury Community Hospital, Evangelical Community Hospital and Shamokin Area Community Hospital.

“I was a resident when I first met Chuck,” Yavorek said. “He was like a father figure to a lot of physicians in the area. He was someone you could always turn to for good, solid, no-nonsense advice, whether it was medical advice, hospital politics or a business problem.”

Yavorek called him the founding father of primary care groups in this area.

“He was an innovator,” he said. “He had a vision, and he had a good nose for business.

“He was an individual who only comes along once in a lifetime. I’m a general surgeon. He was a general practitioner, but I could bounce ideas off him. It didn’t matter what specialties we practiced. You could always count on Chuck.”