A STORY WORTH TELLING
“The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.”
— William Osler
“Come in, Dr. Reitz.”
With those words, my grandmother welcomed the family physician of many years into her home.
“Thank you for coming. S.V. isn’t feeling well; he’s coughing and feverish,” she added.
Sylvester Aldridge was my grandfather’s full legal name. No middle initial. Why she called him S.V. was a question I never thought to ask.
The good doctor pulled a chair next to the bed, opened his small black bag and took out a tongue depressor and a thermometer.
“I expect your fruit trees will be blooming before long,” he said, making small talk with my ailing grandfather.
Standing silently at the edge of the room, I was just tall enough to peek over the windowsill. The physician’s shiny new 1951 Chevy sitting in the driveway caught my eye. When I looked back at him, we made eye contact.
I can still hear the healer’s deep voice say, “My, you’re getting to be a big boy.”
Dr. P.A. Reitz had delivered me into the world a little more than three years before that day on a cold Jan. 20, 1948, evening at the M&S Hospital he founded in Pittsburg. I was told light snow was falling outside.
Thinking back to those days, I remember house calls. Those were once a common convenience by small-town physicians that slowly slipped into the past in the years that followed.
Dad’s years with Perry Brother’s five-and-dime stores moved us from one small Texas town to another before Mount Pleasant became the last stop. Many summer days, however, were still spent at my grandparents’ house. Therefore, much of my childhood health care fell to Reitz, from colds to catastrophes.
For example, there was the time when I suffered a head wound playing with a friend.
“He’s going to need some stitches, Mrs.
Aldridge,” the doctor told my grandmother after the incident.
Here’s how it happened: The wound for which I still display a scar on my head was inflicted during an afternoon of friendly playtime. Granny was enjoying afternoon coffee inside with her friend, Mrs. Martin.
Outside, Martin’s grandson and I whiled away the time with childhood comic-book fantasies. I don’t remember if I was the good guy or the bad guy, but I became the wounded guy when the other youngster got the drop on me with a piece of pipe from atop a car in the driveway.
“Get a good grip on him,” Reitz cautioned my grandmother. His recall of my extreme dislike for his needles was impeccable.
Those aged memories offer a different perspective on today’s health care. Opinions abound, but popular views resemble a genealogical history of Biblical proportions: “Therefore, in all the days of medicine throughout the land, specialization begat doctors passing small towns for big cities; which begat the decline of rural hospitals; and that begat small towns with clinics staffed by physician assistants and nurse practitioners who took care of routine exams and illnesses and begat acute cases to emergency rooms or specialists.”
The good doctor was fondly remembered when he died.
“Dr. P.A. Reitz, one of Pittsburg’s best known, most respected and beloved residents, died at M&S Hospital early Monday morning after suffering a massive heart attack,” the 1978 newspaper article in my archives read.
He was born April 18, 1904, in Kansas. He moved to Pittsburg in 1935. He was a graduate of the University of Nebraska Medical School and completed his internship at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. He served in the Army in Europe during World War II.
“He was a family doctor for 43 years …” the story shared. According to the newspaper tribute, Reitz gave M&S Hospital to the denizens of Pittsburg in 1968.
“The business community closed Thursday afternoon for his funeral at the First Methodist Church,” the clipping concluded. “Interment was at Rose Hill Cemetery.”
I still visit Reitz ... in a manner of speaking. My father and mother, Leon and Indianola Aldridge, are buried at Rose Hill Cemetery right next to Dad’s parents, Sylvester and Hattie Lois Aldridge. Just across the lane at Rose Hill Cemetery, maybe 50 feet away, are the graves of Percy. A. and Hazel Reitz.
I get it that change and adaptation are inevitable aspects of life. But I miss small-town hospitals with doctors’ offices in or near the facility; doctors who made house calls and knew their patients like family.
Some things never change, though. I still don’t like needles.
And I still don’t know why Granny called my grandfather S.V.
Contact Aldridge at [email protected].
Other Aldridge columns are archived at leonaldridge.
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