Dr. Norman Haug “was a hero” for the rural doctor, said Dr. John Westfall, a former rural doctor who now trains others in the same field.

“Norm was the role model for just doing it, instead of talking about doing something,” said Westfall, who teaches at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center.

Haug was 69 when he died May 6.

He had been a doctor in Del Norte for years, served as coroner and jail physician and spearheaded the drive to open a $10 million hospital after the Del Norte hospital closed. He was hospital administrator for that institution, the Rio Grande Hospital, and that is where he died.

Haug worked to get much of the $10 million for the hospital through a Housing and Urban Development grant.

He also was medical director for the Colorado State Veterans’ Center in Homelake, near Monte Vista.

In 1998 he and his wife, Rebecca Haug, a nurse, went to Honduras to help those injured in Hurricane Mitch.

He was named Rural Health Practitioner of the year in 2003 by the National Rural Health Association.

“He was a gentle soul who never got up in arms or raised his voice. He just quietly led,” Westfall said.

“Customer care” was a speciality of Haug’s, said his son James Haug of Denver. “He was good listener, liked to get to know his patients and had a full page of each patient’s history, not just a paragraph.”

“He was their doctor, confidant and friend,” Westfall said.

Norman Haug was born in Lakewood on Dec. 14, 1937, and graduated from Regis High School and Regis University in Denver. He earned his medical degree at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a master’s degree in public health at the University of Oklahoma.

He was a Peace Corps doctor in Malaysia in the early 1960’s and later helped set up the Vietnamese health system.

In 1980 he married Rebecca Sue Sutterfield and moved to Del Norte the next year.

Haug liked the idea of living in a small town and of having a few farm animals. He grew up on a small farm outside Lakewood.

“We always had some sheep, chickens, horses and geese,” said James Haug. “It was kind of recreational farming.”

In addition to his wife and son, Haug is survived by two other sons: Frank Haug of Boulder and Anthony Haug of Denver; and sisters Jeanne Haug and Dorothy Healy, both of Lakewood.