Memories of A Country Doctor: My Father (Part IV)

This is the final section of this series honoring my father. The reason I chose to write about him in the first place was because many of the values he espoused might do well being reinstated. They could possibly blend happily into today’s world, which in many ways is seeking a new identity and connection to its emerging soul.

When I was young, there was still segregation in America. Very shamefully, in my hometown there was a nice hospital for the white population, but none whatsoever for persons of color. My father took his medical oath very seriously, so he treated everyone with the dignity any human being deserved.

He did this in very practical ways. For example, he opened a “Well Baby Clinic” in his own office, which he ran for free on Saturday mornings. At that time mothers of color with their newborns could come and have their babies weighed, measured, and checked. He also gave parents basic health care instructions so they could provide for their children with awareness and optimal care.

Likewise, my pa, grandpa, and uncle, who were all doctors, used their own resources to open a hospital for non-whites in the town. At that time it had to be in a separate building from the town’s official hospital, but my family members saw to it that their hospital came up to the standards of the other establishment.

My medical relatives also were concerned for the welfare of the entire community. So they pressured public officials to provide free immunizations in all the elementary schools in the city. I remember standing in a line with hundreds of school children waiting for my turn to get “stuck” by my father or uncle against such terrors as polio, small pox, typhoid fever, or the flu.

Since my father worked his entire life promoting health and healing, and since he had been a doctor on the front lines of war, he was, and still is, intensely opposed to war in any form. Long before it became “fashionable”, he would go on peace marches and vigils to wave his banner in the face of cops and militants and to openly show his values. In our area that was quite unheard of and risky because there was a military base there that hired many townspeople and kept the place viable.

“I don’t care”, my pa would say. “Standing up for what I believe is right far outweighs what anyone could ever do to me.”

Along public health lines, my father has always been a strong advocate for universal health care. “It is shocking and a disgrace that America calls itself the richest country in the world, but can’t even provide affordable health care for all its citizens”, he laments.

Part of his attitude comes from caring for ill people all his working life, but the impact of the sorry situation in the USA hit hard many times for some of his patients. More than one farmer with no health insurance would become ill and need an operation or extended hospital care. In order to pay the expenses, they would have to sell their farms and then beg their children to take them in or go to the “poor house”. Of course, depression is a close cousin to huge losses such as those and many a farmer spent the last years of his life in utter despair.

“What a waste”, my father would say, “and an unnecessary one.”

Time moved on. Laws changed. The town grew. We kids left home. So, my parents moved from that world, which had been my father’s birthplace and mine, his parents’ and their parents’ before them. They settled elsewhere. He broke new territory by studying psychiatry and blending it with his medical wisdom, gained from years of hands-on experience.

My mother died long ago. Now my pa has grown old and is aging rapidly. But when I am with him it is lovely to sit, just as his farmer patients did long ago, and swap stores, laugh, and reminisce. Oh, the beautiful memories we share!