I was born in Bloomington, Indiana, and my family lived in Indiana until I was 7. We moved to rural Kentucky the summer before I started 2nd grade. We moved to a town called Avawam, Kentucky – in Perry County. Perry County is a small and impoverished county in southeast Kentucky. Coal mining is a big industry. My parents moved there to help family friends start a church.
We lived in a trailer when we first moved in, situated in the middle of a large field. We were lucky to have running water and central heat. Our neighbors across the creek drew their water from a well, heated their homes and cooked with coal and raised their animals and vegetables for food.
My dad worked with the pastor of the church, sewing tarps to cover coal trucks. It was enough money to provide basics, but we certainly weren’t rich, and there were plenty of times when we had to scrape by to make ends meet.
This part of the story is important because this is where I was first introduced to medicine – by way of a now-retired pediatrician named Dr. James Miller and his wife, Jane – who was a retired circulating nurse.
Dr. Jim (as everyone called him) was our pediatrician. He took care of my four younger siblings and me whenever we were sick or for general well-child stuff. I remember him coming to our home to take care of one of my brothers when he got pneumonia right after we moved to Kentucky.
After church services, Dr. Jim and Jane would often take a look at a sick kid or two, looking in ears or at tonsils and prescribing something to help kids get better. I made every attempt to hang around to see what Dr. Jim was doing and accompanied my siblings to office visits when I could. I found his knowledge and professionalism to be fascinating. I wanted to mimic him when I grew up.
I started telling everyone after meeting and observing Dr. Miller that I was going to be a pediatrician. While that didn’t exactly pan out, my dedication to medicine started there.
To this day, I owe my career in medicine to Dr. James Miller.