"New Hampshire's children and families have lost one of their best friends," said former governor Jeanne Shaheen, whose chief of staff, Richard Sigel, is Dr. Deitch's son.
"It is impossible to count the number of lives she touched over her long career," Shaheen said, "but we can safely say that tens of thousands of children had better, healthier lives because of Selma."
Dr. Deitch was the second of three daughters born in Manchester to Dr. John Deitch and Anna Deitch, a nurse. She graduated from Manchester Central High School and went to Tufts University Medical School.
In 1960, she returned to Manchester and married Saul Sigel, a chemical engineer. She commuted daily to Boston and later attended the Harvard School of Public Health.
In 1966, Dr. Deitch was appointed director of New Hampshire's Division of Maternal and Child Health. For seven years, she worked to establish preventive health services for disadvantaged children and families, including family planning clinics and classes on prenatal care and comprehensive child care.
She resigned the state position in 1974 to spend more time working directly with those she believed needed her most -- low-income children and families without access to primary care.
In 1979, her longtime vision became a reality when the not-for-profit Child Health Services opened its doors on Elm Street and began offering full-service health care to low-income families.
In the early years, Dr. Deitch was on call almost every weekend. She made house calls which, even then, were a rarity, and she took young patients out to the movies when their stressed parents needed a break.
Twenty-five years later, Child Health Services serves more than 2,000 children from the Manchester area.
She retired as executive director in 2000 and remained closely involved as clinical consultant to the agency until her death.
Dr. Deitch led the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Early Child Development, Adoption, and Dependent Care and edited the academy's Health in Daycare manual.
