ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, June 21, 1996 TAG: 9606210048
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
SOURCE: BETTY HAYDEN SNIDER STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Above
DR. HOUSTON BELL, who died Wednesday in an auto accident, was a reluctant hero. He didn't set out to attract attention, but it seemed to follow him.
The phone at Dr. Houston Bell's residence rang shortly before 1 that January morning in 1956. Clarence Thornton was calling to say he had just shot his wife and would shoot three of his children and his sister-in-law if the doctor didn't come right over.
Thornton wanted the doctor to pronounce his wife dead, but he didn't want the police notified. Half an hour later, Bell was at Thornton's Williamson Road home, with Roanoke police waiting outside. Bell talked the one-armed house painter into surrendering peacefully.
The city later named Bell its outstanding citizen of the year. After the incident, Bell, an ear surgeon, told a newspaper reporter, "Look, please don't build it up so much."
Forty years later, Bell's family can still recall the details about Thornton, who had painted the Bells' home in the summer of 1955.
After Thornton called Bell, the doctor phoned police, who then asked for his help. They gave him a .38-caliber pistol and a flashlight. Bell was to signal with the light when it was safe for the police to enter Thornton's house.
Bell told the newspaper that he walked into Thornton's house, asked where Mrs. Thornton was - she was lying in the front bedroom - asked where the gun was - it was tucked in Thornton's pocket - and then asked for the gun. The painter handed it over without incident.
"I don't mind saying I was a little scared," Bell said afterward. "I knew the first 15 seconds would decide matters." Thornton was sentenced to life in prison.
Bell, who was 75 when he died Wednesday in an automobile accident near his Southwest Roanoke home, "was a very humble guy," and the publicity surrounding the case embarrassed him, especially when the story made Real Detective magazine, said Houston Bell Jr., his eldest son. There were calls from Hollywood about a movie, but his son isn't sure how serious those offers were.
The Thornton case wasn't the first time Dr. Bell stepped in to save someone's life.
Bell's 21-year-old granddaughter, Ashley, calls this story her favorite: Her father, Houston Jr., was at a Boy Scout Camporee at Victory Stadium about 1953 or 1954 with his father, when a truck hit a Boy Scout, pinning him against the stadium wall. The Bells ran to help, and Houston Jr. remembers his father tried unsuccessfully to move the truck. The boy was finally freed when someone backed up the truck.
The boy fell into Houston Sr.'s arms. His rib cage had been ripped open, exposing his heart. Houston Sr. took quick action to protect the organ from the boy's ribs.
"Dad literally had his heart in his hands," Houston Jr. said. The boy recovered.
Fifteen years ago, Houston Sr. again found himself in a position to save someone's life.
Eddie Wheeler, owner of Fast Service Laundry and Cleaners, was at his Brandon Avenue store one day when he suddenly felt faint and couldn't see clearly. He found out later he'd suffered a stroke.
Wheeler said he doesn't remember much after that until he woke up in the hospital.
He now knows his son helped him to a couch in the back to rest. A short time later, Dr. Bell came in to drop off his cleaning. The cashier asked him if he minded taking a look at Wheeler.
When Bell examined Wheeler, who was 48 at the time, he wasn't breathing and his heart wasn't beating. The doctor resuscitated him.
"I'm still crazy, but I recovered," Wheeler said Thursday. "I was within 30 seconds of dying, and he brought me back.
"You can never repay someone for saving your life," Wheeler said, but "I never did charge him any more after that." The two men became close friends after the stroke, and Wheeler last saw Bell on Tuesday.
Houston Jr. said his father always had a way of being in the right place at the right time to help others. He saved people from choking in restaurants and often happened across accidents and provided first aid.
Dr. Bell reached out daily to the patients who asked him for help.
"There's story after story that he restored people's hearing, even though they couldn't pay," Bell's wife, Mary, said. "He never turned away a patient."
Bell graduated first in his class at the University of Maryland Medical School and served his residency at Roanoke's Gill Memorial Hospital, where he went on to work for more than 25 years. While at Gill, he did pioneering research on the middle ear.
His youngest son, Henry, thought Roanoke needed a free clinic to provide health care to the city's working poor, an idea Dr. Bell supported wholeheartedly. He helped get the Bradley Free Clinic off the ground in 1974 and served as its first board president.
"He thought we could do it, and he helped make it happen," said Estelle Nichols Avner, the clinic's director.
"He really did make a difference in the lives of many different people," Avner said. "We will never know how many people he helped."
That's a sentiment echoed by Bell's family. His three sons said they meet former patients who stop to praise their father, who had been retired for almost 20 years, though he still saw old patients occasionally. He never turned away their calls for advice.
"He always said he could diagnose something just by talking to the patient," Mary Bell said. His first wife, Virginia, died in 1982.
"He cared very deeply about what he did in life," Houston Jr. said.
"That's one man who doesn't have to worry about going to heaven," added his son Carroll, who owns the Coffee Pot restaurant.
The whole family turned to Houston Sr. for whatever ailed them. On Wednesday, he had been out to examine his step-grandson's ear and stopped to rent a tuxedo for a wedding before heading home.
He blacked out as he neared his house on Belle Aire Circle. His car knocked down several mailboxes and rolled past his home before hitting a tree at the end of the street. He died of injuries suffered in the accident.
``He was our only doctor,'' said Carroll Bell's daughter, Tiffany. "If we had a problem, Dad would say, `Walk down to Papa Doc's.'''
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