#2 - A Country Doctor

There was a testimonial dinner held recently to honor a man who had spent 40 years quietly serving mankind and his community. Notable about this man and the occasion was the sense of something slipping away, something we will never regain. The occasion was his retirement from the practice of general medicine - a country doctor "hanging it up" as he put it, "while I still have my wits about me."

Well this man certainly had his wits about him those 40 years, for it was a career measured by far more than the miles of bandages, cords of tongue depressors and worn-out automobiles. And the driveway shoveled when the snow plow did not come, the middle of the night telephone calls and departures, the interrupted suppers and holidays, not to mention lost days off. These things were just distractions, never insurmountable, just there.

The country physician in the classic sense, riding in a horse-drawn buggy, carrying his black bag on his rounds of house calls, spectacles, his respectable demeanor, firm, unwavering, always a gentleman. Except for the horse-and-buggy this was the man we honored. This man who set all those broken bones, and stitched up all those ugly wounds, who stared down and swabbed all those sore throats and picked the splinters out of eyes and bandaged and patched up all those bodies, was the man to whom, for all those years, a whole town ran for help.

The country doctor was everything. He was advisor for all sorts of personal and family difficulties. He was the school physician and stood by at football games. His daily rounds at hospital and nursing homes plus regular office hours still left time to run the Board of Health and to fill the post of Chief of Staff of the hospital. The list is endless. He saved people and treated them and brought nearly a thousand babies into the world.

One man was all these things. A country doctor in a small New England town, he remained human and good humored those forty years. He was very good at what he did, my father. He was one of humanity's quiet heroes.