Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 17, 1995 TAG: 9509180003
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-20 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: DONNA ALVIS-BANKS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
God, Dr. Smith and Dr. Taylor.
I believe it was God who gave Mom the will to fly again after Dr. Smith and Dr. Taylor discovered she had diabetes, but it was the good doctors who took her under their wings.
Not that they were angels, mind you.
When I call up my earliest memory of Dr. Clarence Taylor Jr., I still envision the young physician sprouting serpentine horns.
I was 6 years old in 1959, ready to enter Mrs. Jewel's first-grade class at the old Elliston School. I was excited about my new school dress, my shiny patent leather shoes, the big yellow bus ...
I was excited about everything except my visit to the Alleghany Clinic. My biggest fear waited for me there.
The SHOT.
I couldn't start school until I'd had my smallpox vaccination.
Dr. Taylor was a youthful, handsome doctor with merry eyes and a hearty laugh. I peeped at him from behind my mother's legs.
He smiled at me.
"Come on over here and let me see your new dress," he said.
Coyly, I inched toward him.
"Now turn around so I can see your pretty hair," he urged.
Somehow, I missed that gleam in his eye. Before I knew it, he had speared me with his best shot.
"Now that didn't hurt a bit, did it?" he asked, patting my head.
I glared. I rubbed my stinging arm, stuck out my lower lip and sniveled.
Eventually, I forgave Dr. Taylor.
It was Dr. George Smith Jr. who met my hysterical mother at the clinic on a Sunday morning after my younger brother took a swig of lighter fluid. He pumped out my brother's stomach and advised him to stick to moo juice.
At the end of that first school year, my family moved from Elliston to Christiansburg. We didn't abandon the family doctors, though.
And they didn't abandon us.
I can still see Dr. Smith sliding down the snowbank beside our mobile home, clutching his black bag. He had driven all the way from Shawsville through a storm to treat my mother, who was too ill to get to the Alleghany Clinic.
A month before my youngest sister was born, Dr. Taylor admitted Mom to Radford Community Hospital. Because her disease was unpredictable, Dr. Taylor wanted to keep watch over her.
Thanksgiving came and went without Mom. Early in December, she started badgering the stubborn doctor.
"Dr. Taylor," she begged from her hospital bed, "my kids won't have Christmas if I don't get out of here."
Finally, Dr. Taylor agreed to release Mom from the hospital for 24 hours so she could go Christmas shopping. Before she left, he carefully spelled out the conditions of her parole.
I think Mom set the record for the fastest shopping spree in history.
My sister was born Dec. 14, 1968, and Dr. Taylor still remembers it.
There were lots of trips to the Alleghany Clinic over the years. The memories are permanently tattooed on my brain.
When Dr. Smith removed the cast he had plastered over my brother's broken leg, he chuckled as coins and rocks and Matchbox cars tumbled out. For weeks, my brother had used the cast to store his secret treasures.
I recall frantically dumping the ice tray into my mother's purse as she and Daddy rushed out the door with my baby sister who, covered with chicken pox, was convulsing from fever. The doctor was on his way to the clinic to meet them in the middle of the night. He had instructed my parents to keep the baby cool.
I was 18 years old in 1971, ready to enter Radford College as a freshman. I was excited about my class schedule, my new sense of independence, my future ...
I couldn't start college, however, until I had the required physical examination, so I found myself sitting in Dr. Taylor's examining room with a long form for him to complete.
When he got to one section that instructed the physician to discuss drug abuse with the patient, he stopped and glared at me over the eyeglasses perched on the end of his nose.
Dr. Taylor's "discussion" consisted of three profoundly heartfelt words:
"You'd better not!"
That's the way it was with Dr. Taylor and Dr. Smith. You could count on Dr. Smith's gentle, untiring manner and Dr. Taylor's candid, outspoken concern.
Their partnership was a family practice in the truest sense because they treated their patients like family.
I, for one, am glad I was part of that family.
by CNB