Growing up surrounded by relatives in the medical profession, it surprised no one when Janelle House became a doctor.
“My dad was a family doctor, so was my uncle and great uncles,” she said. “Also my grandmother on my mother’s side was a nurse.”
“I grew up with it. That was the conversation at the dinner table,” she said.
House was named Milam County Health Department medical director last month by the county commissioners replacing Sidney Richardson, who at 96 retired from the position.
In her role with the county, which she balances with her practice at Country Meadows Clinic in Thorndale, she oversees all the COVID-19 clinics, signs for all the vaccines that come into the county and meets with health department members regularly, she said.
“I like working with people and helping them achieve better health,” she said. “I see my role as making Milam County a healthier place to live.”
She was born in California, but at a young age moved with her family to Killeen, then later to Beeville.
She recalled those early years of her dad’s family practice in Beeville.
“My dad would pick me up from first grade and stop to make a house call,” she said. “He would come out with a chicken or baked ham or a basket of apples,” she said of how some patients paid their bill in those days.
Following getting her doctor’s degree in osteopathy from Kansas City University of Medicine and Bioscience she did her internship and residency in Fort Worth.
Her career could have taken a more musical path, had she not opted for a medical one.
She has a postgraduate degree in music.
“I started playing the pia no when I was five,” she said. “I worked my way through college playing the piano, giving piano lessons. I played at weddings, funerals and parties.”
She still plays the piano and enjoys needlepoint in her spare time.
She also loves her poodle and competes in ranch sorting around the state.
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