In 1976, the year Jack Reed returned to his hometown of Columbus to begin his medical practice, the hospital was a small facility providing mostly basic services.
On Friday, Reed, 73, will retire, ending his official duties with what is now Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle, a 45-year span that has seen the hospital grow and expand to a facility offering services and programs that could have scarcely been imagined at the time of Reed’s arrival.
In retrospect, Reed was just what the doctor ordered.
While most doctors pick a discipline and stick to it, Reed’s career is defined by three phases, first internal medicine, then nephrology and finally as program founder and director.
From practicing medicine to program director to his role as the hospital’s chief medical officer, Reed proved eager to accept new challenges, a trait he discovered years earlier as a medical school student.
Although there were no doctors on his family tree — his father was a lineman for the power company and his mother was a beautician — he enrolled in pre-med at Mississippi State largely at his mother’s gentle urging.
It was one of those duck-to-water stories.
At MSU, Reed was enthralled by lectures given by Columbus doctor Henry Holleman, who had served as commander of a field hospital during the Korean War. The popular book and long-running TV series, “MASH” featured Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake, who was modeled on the real-life Holleman.
Reed was accepted into University of Mississippi Medical School as a junior, and quickly became a top student, finishing in the top 10 of his class.
It was in medical school that Reed discovered in himself a trait that would prove valuable to Baptist.
“I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to do,” Reed said. “I liked everything. Everytime we would move onto a new subject, I’d say to myself, ‘I really like this. Maybe this is what I’ll do.’ Then, we would move onto any topic and I’d say the same thing about that.”
That trait would emerge again and again over his career, from practicing internal medicine to nephrology (kidney treatment) to various roles in hospital administration.
A calling to serve Columbus
There was another quality that emerged during Reed’s residency at University of Alabama at Birmingham.
“My motto was it’s best to say yes,” he said. “So whenever there was a request to see a patient or do a consultation, I was always saying yes.”
Reed was chosen as the top resident in his class, opening the door to a range of job offers, including a job at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, which wanted Reed to join its nephrology department. Instead, Reed came “home” to Columbus.
“I knew there was a real need for doctors in Columbus,” he said. “But a lot of it came down to a simple fact. I loved Columbus, had a lot of close friends in town and really loved to hunt and fish. My family didn’t have property, but a lot of my friends did and they would invite me to hunt at their properties. So that had something to do with it.”
Although Reed initially turned down an opportunity to work in the field of nephrology, the opportunity emerged later in his career when the hospital started its nephrology department. Naturally, Reed said “yes.”
As a pupil of Dr. John Bower, a pioneer in kidney disease and dialysis in Mississippi, Reed saw the need for specialized treatment, especially dialysis, for kidney patients in the Golden Triangle.
He served as medical director for national award-winning dialysis units in Columbus, Starkville, Macon and Louisville.
The “yeses” kept coming.
Reed has also served on numerous hospital committees and in leadership positions including as chief of the hospital’s medical staff; chairman of the pharmacy and therapeutics committee for 27 years; director of the hospitalist program; and on the hospital’s executive board.
In 2006, Reed considered retiring.
That lasted only a few days. He was asked to help establish a quality standards program at the hospital. The answer, not unsurprisingly, was yes.
Another big “yes’ came about 10 years later.
Reed had long advocated for Baptist to begin a residency program of its own. When Reed was asked to help start the residency program in 2016, he again said yes.
“Oh, listen, that meant the world to me,” he said. “For years, I had been recruiting doctors, not as a part of my responsibilities, but because of how badly we needed doctors. So having a residency program here, well, that was a dream come true. I was thrilled to have the chance to help get it started here.”
While it’s no coincidence that Reed was a part of so many of the hospital’s new programs and services, Reed is reluctant to take too great a share of the credit.
“What we do is a team sport,” he said. “Every time, we had a great team and that includes great administrators.”
One of those administrators, Dr. Paul Cade, said Reed’s contributions cannot be overestimated.
“Dr. Reed was a visionary for healthcare in our community,” Cade said. “He has been committed to our hospital, serving as our very first chief medical officer. He has had a great rapport with patients, employees and doctors here and always kept patients number one when making decisions for the hospital.”
‘Smell the roses’
Reed said he still plans to stay connected to the hospital, but not in an official capacity. Reed said he will now devote more attention to his wife, Beth, his children and grandchildren and a host of other interests.
He’ll also take some time to recover from a rotator cuff surgery he had earlier this year.
“It’s time to stop and smell the roses and, for me, my roses are my wife, my family, my church and my community. I’m not going to volunteer for anything just yet. I want to get rested up and patched up. But I will be involved in things I care about. I want to be a better citizen. I love Columbus and I love the hospital.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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