Let's start with the present

 Malcolm G Heath, in 1947

2013 will be the 100th anniversary of my father's birth.

In the community where he spent 28 years practicing medicine as a flying, country doctor, his legend is not only intact but growing.

Teresa DeGraaff, nee Teresa Nash, daughter of Al Nash who was the pharmacist and owner of the Friday Harbor, Washington drugstore which supported my father, has passionately taken on the assignment to bear witness to the medical history of the county, San Juan, at the same time as the new Peace Health Peace Island Medical Center has opened as a major presence in Friday Harbor.

Recently, on November 29, Teresa was asked to speak at the 36th Anniversary luncheon of the San Juan Medical Guild.  Below you will find the text of her talk, reproduced with permission.

 Photograph by Paula C Heath

Teresa DeGraaff:

Thank you. Can you hear me?            

It is my pleasure to participate in the part of your program that salutes the past. You will find at your table a Timeline of Medical Services on San Juan Island. Corrections or additions to fill in gaps are requested and needed. This provides a list of key people who did significant work in a variety of capacities to provide professional health care to the people of the San Juan Islands over the last 100 years.

My comments will address those requested, the medical services history on San Juan Island between 1950 and 1980. This encompasses the work done by Roy Franklin’s Islands Sky Ferries, The Nash Families at the Drugstore, and Dr. Heath.  My information comes from a variety of sources that I can provide upon request.
 
Dr. Malcolm Heath arrived with his growing family in 1950, and began his practice out of his car, garage, and living room until his equipment arrived and he could set up in the vacated office of Dr. Judge, across the street from the Drugstore in what is now Rocky Bay Café.

There is a photo of Heath and that office on the display table.

 

In the first seven years Heath was in Friday Harbor, he had accomplished the following:

          1) Heath moved his office on Orcas Island 3 times in the 1^st year 

2)    moved his office from the car and garage to a real office in Friday Harbor

3)    moved his family twice- first to a rental,

4)    Then he purchased property on the west side, had his home built, and moved again

5)    He learned to fly and purchased his first airplane. Soon after he crashed it.

6)    So he bought a second airplane

7)    He flew to Bellingham once weekly to perform surgery at St. Joe’s Hospital.

8)    He was making house calls on all inhabited islands in S.J. County, 24 hours a day.

9)    Heath maintained office hours both in Friday Harbor and in Eastsound

10) Heath did the fund-raising on all islands to plan and build the first two clinics on two islands that opened the same year, 1957.

All this combined makes one wonder when he ever saw his family or got any sleep.  The most remarkable part of Dr. Heath was that he served this community of islands for 28 years nearly single-handedly.

Dr. Bob Kaiser from St. Joe’s Hospital wrote that Heath had a missionary kind of spirit.  Pat Rowe from Lopez Island wrote in his book, “Heath always wanted to be where he might be needed the most. If there was a possibility of helping save a life, he would risk his own to be there.” Heath  gave unequivocal help, no matter how trivial the symptom. He would come when anyone called. Heath had the instinct that drives one to nurture, heal, save, counsel, all at the expense of himself.

 

WWII pilot Roy Franklin arrived in Friday Harbor in 1947. He began his flying services out of Lyle King’s cow pasture because there weren’t any airports. When Heath couldn’t fly himself, Franklin took him where he needed to go. Heath is well known for being the “Flying Country Doctor.” He was the last of the non-traditional country doctors who made house calls often by air! 

Roy flew out of the cow pasture day or night. Wandering cows and ruts were a constant hazard, particularly on landing. If a woman arrived in F.H. with her new baby born at St. Joe’s, she got out of the plane and likely stepped into a pile of cow dung. Roy finished a new airport in 1960.

Stories abound of hair-raising adventures in inclement weather conditions with life-threatening emergencies either on board the flights, or at the small island airports of their destination. Roy recounts in his book, “Island Bush Pilot” a few of the hazardous flights he took with Dr. Heath getting him to a patient, or a patient to the hospital in Bellingham. Other stories are authored by Heath’s former patients, and are found in the three-ring binders around the room.

The team on the ground was as important as the flying doctor.
 

Heath’s primary helper was his wife, Evelyn, who he leaned on heavily. She worked in his office while keeping the fires burning at home, raising two children almost as single mother since Heath was usually at work.

 At Dr. Heath’s request, Ethel Dale arrived and worked full-time until her retirement three decades later.  Also assisting was nurse Betty Nash.

 

When medicine was needed, they called on Albert Nash Sr. at Friday Harbor Drug Co. The mural on the front of the drugstore is from a photo taken around 1930.  The man in the front is Albert Sr. as a young man.

His son, my father Albert Nash Jr., purchased the store in 1964. The Nash Family provided necessary medicine for people on all islands for 76 years. Speedy delivery of prescription medications was aided significantly when Les LaBar established Aeronautical Services.  

 

The old homeopathic tonics and products on the tables came from my dad’s garage. They were ones that didn’t sell.

 Photograph by Paula C Heath

 

Heath, my grandfather, and father worked closely together. It was not uncommon for dad to have to be called in the middle of the night to get medicine for a patient of Dr. Heath’s.

 

Before Gale Carter bought an ambulance so he and Dr. Clarice Dorpat could start the EMT program, the emergency medical system consisted of Dr. Heath, Roy Franklin, Al Nash, Betty Nash, and Ethel Dale who provided the necessary life-saving medical services.  Franklin and Heath worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year, for nearly three decades, caring for the people in the San Juans.

 Betty Nash, present day, photograph by Paula C Heath

 

Ethel Dale, in 1994 at age 90, with Hillary Heath, Dr. Heath's granddaughter

In the early seventies, Heath started plans for a new medical center. He appointed banker Alan Carter as President of the newly formed San Juan Medical Board to head fund-raising.

Many community members thought the new facility should be named after Dr. Heath. But as Carol Linde said, “He would not toot his own horn,” and he would not agree to it. Thus, it was named Inter-Island Medical Center.

The inauguration in 1976 coincided with the year that Jerry Fisher and Avon McGinnis established the San Juan Medical Guild to raise money to buy updated and needed equipment for the new medical center. The guild published, “Friday Harbor A-la-Carte” as a successful fund-raiser.

Dr. Heath retired in 1978, but was called back to service in 1979 after two doctors who came to replace him were unable to fill his shoes. Maybe Bill Cosby summed up best how the islanders felt about Dr. Heath when he said, “He was head and shoulders above us all. For his dedicated service, there should be a statue.”

 

Growing up with the drugstore meant that all of Al’s seven children had to work there.  Numerous stories arose from my 20 years of work in all areas of the drugstore.  They all point to a businessman of integrity, who was fair, honest, knowledgeable, and who would never fire anybody, even if he knew the employee was stealing from him.

One story about my dad exemplifies his sincere caring, and altruistic sacrificial service to this community.

During one winter in the early nineties, there was a fierce Northeaster storm that had knocked trees down all over the county leaving islanders in below freezing temperatures and in the dark for almost two weeks. At the drugstore and the only hardware store, 100% of the candles and batteries had been sold out. Customers came in every day for more but there were none to be purchased on the islands. We couldn’t get them fast enough from any wholesaler.

Dad did something unprecedented. He sent me to Bellingham in my plane to shop for batteries and candles to sell. I returned a few hours later with them.

He was incredulous and shocked when I showed him the bag. “Is that all you got?” he exclaimed with surprise!

 “They are expensive and I was afraid to get too many,” I sheepishly stammered.

“You should have gotten more! People are suffering!” dad empathetically asserted.

He put them on the shelf at a price lower than I had paid for them. He explained that he had to price them at the advertised rate, no matter how much he had to pay for them.  That was how he ran his business and his life, with integrity and service. That also was the only time he ever sold Sears batteries.

 

We salute those in the past who selflessly built our medical community over the last century to what it is today. Thank you. ##