Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 17, 1995 TAG: 9509180002
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-20 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: DONNA ALVIS-BANKS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SHAWSVILLE LENGTH: Long
Clarence Taylor Jr. was a senior medical student and George Smith Jr. was a resident in general practice at the Medical College of Virginia.
It just so happened they had apartments in the same building.
It just so happened they shared the same dream.
They dreamed of being doctors and of starting a family practice.
But they never dreamed it would come to this.
"We've been together ever since," said Taylor. "It's been a good marriage and we've just gotten divorced!"
Taylor's laughter rang through the waiting room at Shawsville Family Practice. Until it was acquired in June by the Lewis-Gale Clinic, the medical center the two men opened in Shawsville 38 years ago was known as the Alleghany Clinic.
Their partnership proved a blessing to this New River Valley community. Until Smith arrived on July 11, 1955, Shawsville had not had a practicing physician for 20 years. Taylor joined Smith two years later.
Now, Taylor is retiring and Smith has reduced his work schedule.
"I don't go to the hospital anymore," Smith said.
Although he has shaved his workweek to "approximately 20 hours," Smith isn't ready to hang up his stethoscope yet.
"I guess some of us don't know when to quit," he said with a shy smile.
Judging from the response of folks who attended an open house on a recent Sunday at the clinic in honor of Taylor's retirement and Smith's semiretirement, it's a good thing.
"There's no better doctors anywhere," said D.R. Rice, a retired Norfolk and Western Railway engineer who has been a patient of Smith and Taylor for 40 years.
"I'm sure gonna miss 'em," Rice lamented. "It's gonna be strange going to a doctor who doesn't know all about you. Dr. Taylor came to my house one night when I had a virus and sat with me all night long."
Other longtime New River Valley residents have similar stories about the good doctors. They also have a few old chestnuts.
Frank Akers, a former deputy for the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, laughs when he recalls the visits he made to the clinic in his policeman's uniform.
``Dr. Taylor would say, `Get the crooked needle out! We use a bent needle for cops!''' Akers said.
``Dr. Taylor was always telling me to make Frank quit eating sweets,'' added Akers' wife, Louise. ``I said, `Dr. Taylor, YOU tell Frank to quit bringing the doughnuts home.'''
"You could call either doctor anytime day or night. You could call them on Sunday," Akers said. "You don't find too many like that."
Judy Musselman, a nurse who hasworked with Smith and Taylor for more than 30 years, cannot remember a single time when the doctors got irritated or visibly upset at the office.
"They're wonderful to work for," Musselman said. "They're wonderful teachers. ... You can't have low morale when you're working with them."
After all these years, Musselman has even learned to love the doctors' quirky habits.
"You can tell Dr. Taylor's here when the door slams," she said. "Dr. Smith usually comes in whistling or humming."
"And Dr. Taylor never closes a door when he's looking for something," Musselman said. "We knew he had been at the clinic one night because all the cabinet doors were open when we came in early the next morning."
Dr. Karen Quinn, a physician who joined the family practice in 1981, said she, too, feels fortunate to have worked with Smith and Taylor.
"I had all the book knowledge when I came here, but I learned the real practice from Dr. Smith's and Dr. Taylor's example," she noted. "They're role models for anyone in family practice."
"They were in their 50s when I joined them and they could outrun me," added Quinn, who's now 43. "I don't know how they did it when they were younger."
Julie Stewart, 38, has worked as a nurse at the clinic for 20 years, but she's known the doctors much longer than that. Smith is her father and Taylor, she says, is her "second father."
"We've always lived next door to each other," Stewart explained. "We ate together. We had ballgames and threw balls through each other's windows. We came and went in each other's houses."
The Smiths and Taylors are still next-door neighbors.
Ora and Clarence Taylor have been married 42 years and have four children - three boys and one girl.
Mildred and George Smith - ``Bob'' to those closest to him - have been married 46 years and have raised three girls and one boy.
The doctors' wives have shared their lives with each other while sharing their husbands with the people of Shawsville.
"Their philosophy from the beginning was to serve the community," said Ora Taylor, who admits to a lifetime of lost sleep.
"Our families are very close," she noted. "I feel like [the Smiths'] children are ours."
Ora Taylor recalls the time the Smith girls and the Taylor boys decided to tear all the blooms off the snowball bush in her front yard, and she recollects the time she caught the toddlers tearing off something else - their clothes.
"They were running around in the buff together in the front yard," she said, laughing.
"Our fathers had long hours," Julie Stewart said. "They would come home at 6 and go back to the clinic at 7. We were in bed by the time they got home."
Stewart said she never resented her father's profession, however. In fact, she became interested in nursing when her father used to take her with him on house calls.
"Both are very caring doctors," Stewart said. "They've both tried to be here for the community, to be available."
His career, Dr. Taylor admits, has been a mixture of joy and heartbreak. He's known the elation of welcoming babies to the world and the despair of watching active people betrayed by Alzheimer's disease.
"As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a doctor," Taylor said. "My father was a minister. I don't know why I chose a different path. It was one of those things I wanted to do."
Taylor, who will turn 69 on Thursday, said he's going to miss his daily work with people. He won't, he says in his characteristically happy-go-lucky manner, miss the "hassles" of modern-day medical red tape.
He expects maybe he'll see a little less of his partner with his retirement.
"I don't see how we could see each other any more than we have for the past 38 years. He's the first person I see in the morning and usually the last I see at night."
"We'll probably become closer," he added. "It's been a great professional relationship and it's been a great personal relationship."
With time on his hands, Taylor says he's going to visit his children and grandchildren and attend to his two favorite hobbies - gardening and stained glass.
He will not play golf. He'll leave that to Smith.
"He's a scratch golfer," Taylor said, tossing a mischievous look in his partner's direction. "He scratches every place while he plays."
by CNB