To know Yoel Haller was to know warmth, cheerfulness, dedication, and social conscience. His eldest daughter, Heidi, described how he greeted each day as an adventure to be relished. And his younger daughter, Ellen, said her father practiced the fine art of “relentless positivity.” So many who knew him spoke of a perennial “twinkle in his eye.”
Dr. Yoel Irwin Haller passed away peacefully and surrounded with love, at the age of 95 on November 3, 2025. He was born on October 30, 1930.
Graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in just three years, Yoel continued at Penn to complete medical school.
In his late twenties, as a father of three, Heidi, Reuben, and Ellen, he built a distinguished career as an obstetrician-gynecologist in San Francisco, where he helped deliver hundreds of babies and cared for generations of families. His beloved wife, Eva, describes his practice in this way: “On one level, he was a society doctor, for wealthy or famous people, like Danielle Steele. But he was also a doctor to teachers and rabbis and ministers and some who couldn’t pay.” (His joyful professionalism was exalted in the 1984 book Having a Baby, by Danielle Steel, Diana Burt and Katherine Dusay.)
Equally important was his early advocacy for women’s equality and reproductive rights. At a particularly seminal time, the 1970s, he served as the medical director of Planned Parenthood for San Francisco. In 1973, Roe v. Wade was signed into law, and the danger to those who worked for Planned Parenthood was very real. “Once, Yoel told me,” Judi remarks, “that one of his colleagues was shot. So, he started wearing a bulletproof vest!” Eva and Yoel’s “adopted” grandson, Max Jones, said that Yoel had a person checking under his car for potential bombs!
And Eva added that, even in the ’80s, when he was conferring with Planned Parenthood colleagues in Ventura, there was a sign placed on top of his car that said: “Yoel Irwin Haller: Murderer!” But he remained undaunted in his support of women’s reproductive rights.
Yoel had three marriages. The first was to Darcy Fink (the mother of his three children), which ended in divorce. Later, he married Carola Myers Duhl (mother of his stepchildren, Pam, Nina, David, and Susan), who tragically died of cancer in 1985. This rocked Yoel’s world. But two years later, he met Eva Roman and joy returned to his life. She was also widowed, and she had an adult son, Ernan.
Eva and Yoel met on a bus in Mexico, and when he learned she was also widowed, he asked her what she missed from her marriage. “The conspiracy.” she answered simply. At first, he didn’t understand, but when she explained it was “the conspiracy of a couple to be able to communicate their feelings and their thoughts nonverbally across a room,” he was moved. By the end of that day, Yoel was calling the people in his life to say he had met the woman he was going to marry.
That moment, for Eva, arrived a little later. After they had been seeing each other for a while, Yoel invited her to his home in San Francisco. When they sat down to dinner, she was surprised to see he had the same flatware as she did. “It was a midcentury-modern style they had at the Museum of Modern Art. I was struck by the fact we both loved the same design! I started to laugh and said, ‘Would you put my luggage’ — because he was taking my luggage to the guest wing — ‘Would you please put my luggage in your bedroom.’”
Eva and Yoel shared the same passion for activism, humanitarian causes, and philanthropy. Through their involvement in organizations such as Counterpart International, a leading partner with the State Department in the delivery of humanitarian assistance around the world, and Center for Defense Information, which independently researches the social, economic, environmental, political and military components of global security, the Hallers traveled to multiple countries, including the “-stan” countries (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, etc.) right after the fall of the Soviet Union, seeking ways to help these countries deal with issues of poverty, and establish food and educational programs.
Continuing to partner with Counterpart and other humanitarian organizations, Eva and Yoel traveled all over the world. They went to Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Bhutan, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and India, just to name some. When in Kenya, Yoel’s medical experience coupled with his compassion came to the fore when he did his best to dissuade some Kenyan girls not to go through with “female circumcision,” explaining how painful it would be and the damage it would do to their bodies. He was countering a strong societal pressure (the girls said they couldn’t get married unless they got circumcised) but managed to persuade a few!
Beyond medicine and advocacy, Yoel’s life reflected a deep love of art, music, and the theater, a love that he instilled in his children. And it didn’t only express itself in terms of the classical arts. As Heidi said: “One of my favorite memories is from when I was 13 and Reuben was 12 — Dad took us to the Fillmore West to see Country Joe and the Fish, The Flamin’ Groovies, and Led Zeppelin on their very first U.S. tour. He had an absolute blast — right there with us, soaking in the music and the moment.” Eva and Yoel shared a passion for Mahler, Mendelssohn, opera, and chamber music. They often frequented often art museums such as MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum in N.Y.C., as well as the San Francisco Jewish Museum.
Yoel served on multiple boards, including Friends of Hospice in San Francisco, Hospice of Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Civic Light Opera Association, and UCSB Chancellor’s Council.
He will be sorely missed by all who knew and loved him. As his daughter, Heidi, said in her moving eulogy at his memorial service: “A magnificent tree has fallen.”
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