There’s a big name missing in Rockdale

By Mike Brown
Reporter Editor

 One of Rockdale’s most familiar names has quietly disappeared over the past several months. Richards Memorial Hospital has become Little River Medical Center.
 Dr. John T. Richards passed away on Sept. 2, 1988, almost 20 years ago. That means roughly one generation has grown up in this town with no personal knowledge of the man who brought Rockdale its first real hospital and clinic.
 “Dr. Johnny,” as he was known to many, was as much a part of Rockdale as hot summers and blue northers during his 77 years on this earth.
 He was born here March 7, 1911. During his time at Rockdale High School he went from water boy to star running back on the Tiger football team.
 One of the offensive linemen who used to open holes for the future patron saint of Rockdale medicine was George Sessions Perry, the future patron saint of Rockdale literature.
 Dr. Richards interned at King’s Daughters, just up the road in Temple, but he put on a uniform and went off to defend democracy from the evil lunatics for whom medicine was a tool to kill or enslave the rest of the world.
 While he was in the army Dr. Richards was instrumental in the discovery of, and research into, the Bullis Fever Virus. During World War II he ran a hospital in the United Kingdom.
 After the war the distinguished young doctor could have written his ticket to virtually any hospital in Texas and many throughout the United States.
 He came back to Rockdale.
 His dream of a Rockdale hospital came into clear focus one night when he was returning from Cameron’s hospital, where he had delivered a baby in the pre-dawn hours, when he bravely foiled a carjacking by a man who wanted the drugs in Dr. Richards’ medical bag.
 In 1949, with help from friends, he acquired a World War II military surplus building and opened it where Little River Medical Clinic is now, 602 North Main. It became our town’s hospital for the next quarter century.
 When our current hospital was built in 1973 there was no doubt what it would be named.
 “Dr. Johnny” also founded Rockdale Medical Association, which operated our town’s clinic. For many years the North Main structure was called “Richards Clinic & Hospital.”
 Then what? Then he practiced medicine, almost to the end of his days. There wasn’t a finer diagnostician than Dr. John T. Richards.
 Nor a finer man.
 So far, I’ve told you his biography. Now let me tell you a bit about Dr. Johnny as a person.
 He had wanted to be a doctor since age seven. How did he become one?
 He hitchhiked from Rockdale to Galveston to enroll in medical school. He had $4 in his pocket. He worked his way through school. It wasn’t clerical work. The future doctor was a stevedore on the Galveston docks.
 Only Dr. Richards and wife Betty, who was his nurse during his early practice here, knew about the six years in a row Christmas dinners didn’t get eaten with their family because Dr. Richards was called away to deliver babies.
 He and Betty gave each other medical instruments for Christmas and birthday presents during his early years in medicine. Why? He wasn’t going to get them any other way.
 Any regrets? “I don’t know of a more rewarding life than that of a physician,” he told me when he retired in 1986.
 He meant it, too. That’s the kind of man he was.
 Now, Blackhawk Healthcare has been a knight on a white horse for Rockdale. Their infusion of capital and expertise has issued in a golden age of healthcare in an institution which has come within an eyelash of closing more than once.
 They have a perfect right to call their facilities anything they like. They never knew Dr. Johnny and don’t remember him.
 It’s just that, some of us do.

mike@rockdalereporter.com