Roland Nyegaard

Roland Carlos Nyegaard, 93 years passed away peacefully with family in his home on November 2, 2025. Born on September 16, 1932, in Asuncion, Paraguay, he and his family came to the United States on a cargo ship in January 1942 to New Orleans and then via train to San Francisco. Roland worked from the moment of his arrival – as paper boy to a dishwasher as he learned English then excelled in school graduating from Modesto High School, UC Berkeley then USC Medical School.

Roland Nyegaard personified compassion, and he lived it every day of his 93 years of life. He organized medical missions to Central America for years, bringing medical attention to people who had never seen a doctor. Roland’s life is an epic of making people’s lives better. His compassion for the one he was unable to help reveals the depths of his caring and empathy, his constant desire to heal, comfort, and spread hope.

Roland had a razor sharp, incisive intellect. He read voraciously and he loved reading. He read widely in economics, history, foreign policy, politics, medicine, and art. He would often share his latest book with you and loved it when you could recommend a great book he had not read.

Roland served as a mentor to many residents in local hospitals. He brought insights and wisdom from more than a half century of medical practice to these young doctors and helped shape them as medical professionals. one of Roland’s many skills was his gift of compassion. Roland’s gift for empathy provided shelter in the midst of a raging storm.

Roland loved Kate and Kate loved Roland for 70 years of marriage, to mention one is to immediately invoke the other. Kate and Roland loved their shared sisters and brother, their daughter Kim Meredith and her husband Allen Meredith, their granddaughter Alexis Meredith Weaver and her husband Nick Weaver, and great- grandson Wilder Weaver, and their grandson Julian Saadah and his mother Michele Saadah. Roland is survived by all of these family members, and his sisters Carmen Frymire and Nora Bankston.

Roland loved the arts. He and Kate were joyous advocates for the Gallo center, the state theater, the prospect theater, the Modesto opera, and innumerable local events.

Roland passionately believed in each person’s right to make choices for themselves. He and Kate championed women’s rights, women’s education, women in politics, and women’s reproductive freedom. Roland was never vitriolic, never strident, never vicious. He was encouraging, joyful, and healing in his medical practice, his life of service, and in all his friendships.

The good that he did lives in the thousands of patients he treated, the thousand babies he delivered, the thousands of friendships he made and the profound effects of his community and global service. Roland Nyegaard was the best of us and each of us who knew him remembers that incandescent, transcendent spark of his memory, his smile, his encouragement.

Roland came here as a Spanish speaking immigrant from Paraguay in 1942 on the eve of World War II. He leaves us as a giant in the California medical community. here in Modesto, he was the Chairman of Doctors Medical Center, Ethics Chair at Doctors Medical Center, President of the Stanislaus Medical Society, and a stellar member of the Tumor Board. Roland was a man whose friendship was a priceless gift, whose wisdom, sincerity, and integrity brought healing and comfort to thousands.

A memorial service will take place November 15, 2025 at 3:00pm at Modesto’s First United Methodist Church.

Gifts in honor of Dr. Roland Nyegaard can be made to Planned Parenthood Mar Monte at www.ppmarmonte.org/donate-today.