5 MEDICAL PEOPLE OF INTEREST
BY GLORIA TAYLOR WEINBERG
PHOTOS BY ED DRONDOSKI
Ed Rossario is an unassuming guy with an engaging
68
smile and a soothing demeanor — until you
put a microphone in his hand.
Then Ed gets funky. Ed rocks. Ed gets people
on their feet and dancing. It’s pretty much the
same thing he does when you put a scalpel in his hand.
And that’s what the orthopedic surgeon loves about his
work.
“A lot of my patients show up at our gigs, and when I see
someone on the dance floor that I just did a bilateral knee
replacement on, there’s a great deal of satisfaction in that,”
he says. “They might have come to me in a wheelchair, and
now they’re dancing. That’s the reason I became an orthopedic
surgeon.”
On weekends, Rossario is the lead singer and rhythm guitarist
for The Showcase Band, which plays at area restaurants
as well as city events like the upcoming Fall Festival in Port
St. Lucie and the Pineapple Festival in Jensen Beach. They’ve
opened for national bands, including Rare Earth and The
Beach Boys at Tradition.
With an established medical practice and four understanding
partners at Coastal Orthopaedic & Sports Medicine Center
in Port St. Lucie, Rossario recently found an opportunity
to resurrect his hidden passion for music.
“I had a patient whose husband was a drummer having
shoulder problems,” Rossario says. “Turned out he had a
band and he
was looking
for a singer, so
I asked him if I
could audition.
He gave me two
of the hardest
songs to sing,
but when I finished
the audition,
he followed
me out to my car
and said, ‘Doc,
you’re hired.’ “
Gary Zanello,
the drummer,
whose day job is
owner of Port St.
Lucie Plumbing,
says Rossario
fixed his shoulder
as well as
completing the
band, which includes
Zanello’s
17-year-old son Gary Z on lead guitar and vocals; bass player
Dave Mundy, the instrumental music director of Indian River
Charter High School in Vero Beach where Gary Z is a senior,
and Marc Rabins, the keyboardist, who works in the city of
Port St. Lucie communications department.
“What impressed me was how strong and powerful his
voice is,” Zanello says of Rossario. “We play all kinds of music
— rock, blues, jazz — and he’s very versatile.”
Rossario started making music at 12, and by age 15 he was
doing semi-professional gigs. He put his music on hold while
he was in medical school. “My time was so precious then,
and I had to study a lot,” he says. “But I’m your typical Type
A personality, and I needed an outlet.”
Rossario, a native of Cuba whose physician father moved
his family to Daytona Beach when Ed was 4, has a special
appreciation for his many gifts. “My father came here to flee
communism,” he says. “He wanted us to be able to live here
and achieve the American dream.”
It’s what Ed Rossario wants for his children, as well.
“That’s my goal,” he says. “To raise my children to be better
people: compassionate, successful people.” After one of his
first performances, Rossario’s 11-year-old daughter, Kalen,
donned a T-shirt that read, MY DAD IS A ROCK STAR. “That
made me proud,” he says. “But my mother is, and always has
been, my biggest fan.”
Rossario also has the enthusiastic support of his wife, Lisa,
>>
The
ROCKIN’ DOC