THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 1, 1996 TAG: 9606010002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: OPINION
SOURCE: KERRY DOUGHERTY
LENGTH: 74 lines
I long ago misplaced the spiral notebooks I filled in 1993 while following Dr. Richard Andrews around for a couple of days on the Eastern Shore.
Yet, even without my notes I remember the scene like it was yesterday: the blistering summer sun, the boxy one-story clinic on a country road in Nassawadox, and the weathered faces of the migrant workers who streamed into Andrews' examining rooms.
Dr. Andrews - then 37 - was everything to these migrants: pediatrician, obstetrician, dermatologist, psychologist, friend.
I remember one patient, a woman who appeared to be in her early 50s. Her face was grotesquely swollen from an abscessed gum. Peering into her mouth, Andrews became angry. A succession of dentists had yanked her decayed teeth rather than fill them.
``Don't let the dentist pull your teeth,'' he pleaded with her. ``You ask for a filling.''
After the woman left he checked her chart. She was 30.
And so it went, scores of patients in the days I was there, thousands over the course of a year. They were the poorest of Virginia's poor - migrant farm workers. They came to Andrews, out of the fields - unwashed, some carrying diseases they'd brought with them from Guatamala and Mexico.
Andrews didn't mind that his patients weren't tidy - these were his people. In the lobby of his clinic was a used-clothing bin, in the back was a food pantry. Andrews took his time with each patient, speaking in Spanish, inquiring about the conditions where they lived, urging parents to register their children in Head Start. Worried about chronic dehydration, he reminded every worker to drink water: ``Even if you're not thirsty.''
He counseled couples about domestic violence and tested nearly everyone for tuberculosis. He begged - often unsuccessfully - for injured workers to take a few days off even though it would mean they would not get paid.
On my last day there, one of his AIDS patients came in and Andrews had special treatment for him: a warm hug, words of encouragement and an arm draped around the man's shoulder as he left.
As I watched Richard Andrews at work I thought of Albert Schweitzer, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day and a handful of other extraordinary people who chose to live their lives among the poor. Andrews saw something most of us don't: the dignity in people trapped by poverty.
After graduating from Georgetown Medical School, Andrews could have gone into a lucrative private practice. Instead, he decided to practice ``Third World medicine.'' He didn't have to travel far from Washington to find it.
His patients were the folks some disgracefully demonize: Dirty foreigners, many here illegally, who come to our fields in search of a better life. Never mind that they pick our food and toil in the hot sun for wages that would insult American workers.
About half a year after I wrote my story, Dr. Andrews lost his job in a dispute over personnel. But he couldn't bring himself to leave the Eastern Shore. You see, Andrews has a philosophy that encompasses the health of the entire community. His library is a good example.
Because Nassawadox had no public library, Andrews decided to make one. He rented an abandoned storefront for $250 a month, renovated and painted the building and scavenged books. Soon there were 8,000 volumes on the shelves of the Northampton Free Library, and Andrews would sometimes stand on the steps and cajole people in to borrow a book.
``I'm interested in literacy and how it relates to the overall health of the community,'' he told staff writer Karen Jolly Davis.
For two picking seasons the estimated 4,000 to 7,000 migrants who poured onto the Eastern Shore had only a part-time doctor available to them while Andrews worked in local clinics nearby.
Good news came earlier this week when Andrews was back at work. The migrant clinic is open under new management and he's happily practicing Third World medicine in the second poorest county in Virginia.
``Richard Andrews is absolutely passionate about poor people,'' said one woman who knows him well.
Virginia is lucky to have him. Welcome back, Dr. Andrews. MEMO: Ms. Dougherty is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB