Published: September 03, 2008 10:44 pm            

Dr. Louis Gibson: Physician, founder dies

Co-founder of Medical Arts Clinic passes away at 85

Dr. Louis Gibson was legendary for his boldness and accuracy, whether he was in the operating room or the board room. He died Sunday at the age of 85.

Gibson’s route to Navarro County began at the tail end of World War II when he became a medical officer with the U.S. Army and met three other young Army doctors who also dreamed big.

“Louis could see farther down the road than any man he’d ever seen,” said Dr. Robert Bone, the surviving member of that early partnership.

In their spare hours, they talked about the possibility of getting young doctors together and forming a clinic sometime, Bone explained. “The thought stayed with him. (Robert) Mertz, Gibson and I wound up in Fort Hood, when it was Camp Hood, and we were the three main doctors in that hospital. And once again, we planned on the possibility of starting a clinic together.”

The others liked the idea, but it was Gibson who heard about construction of a new hospital in Corsicana and began to make the necessary contacts, people like Bill Stroube, who advised them to formalize their partnerships. Taking out individual loans, each of the four pitched in $5,000 to build a small 4,000 square-foot clinic in 1952. And, showing his early deal-making skills, it was Gibson who convinced insurance companies and medical supply companies to furnish the clinic with almost no money down.

“We had no idea we would be able to make our expenses our first months of practice,” Bone explained. “We had all sorts of challenges. Our parking lot was not hard surface, and we had all sorts of rain those first months and had a mud parking lot.”

The average age of the doctors in Corsicana was 68 then, and the four Medical Arts Clinic doctors, Gibson, Mertz, Bone and Jake Barron, were in their late 20s, early 30s.

“So, we were looked on as kids. We probably do the same thing to young doctors now,” Bone recalled. “That kind of bonded us together because of some of the things we did the older doctors didn’t do. They’d say we were experimenting on their patients.”

One thing they all had in common was an obligation to take care of sick people regardless of their financial means, Bone said. “That was universal. We all felt that way.”

Each also developed important professional contacts, and Gibson’s included Drs. Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley, two surgeons in Houston who were international ground-breakers.

Early on, Gibson showed flare and skill, willing to take on any kind of surgical case, colleagues said.

“Fearless,” said Dr. Kent Rogers. “He had the energy, drive and training, and he did a terrific job.”

His dedication to craft extended beyond his own practice, however. Dr. Neal Green came to the clinic in 1975, and remembers Gibson as generous with his time and talents, even to the junior members of the clinic.

“You could call Dr. Gibson at any hour of the day or night and that guy would come to the hospital and help you out of a jam,” Green said. “He always placed medicine first. I can remember seeing Dr. Gibson in the emergency room suturing up lacerations or bleeders at 4 a.m. when he was 60 years old.”

Gibson did the first abdominal aortic aneurysm surgery in North Texas, and one of the first heart pacemakers in Texas, Bone said.

That kind of first-rate medical care attracted other specialists to Corsicana, and within 43 years there were 50 specialists practicing out of the clinic and its satellites.

During those decades, they built four expansions onto the clinic, Bone said. It was the Cuban Missile Crisis which inspired Gibson to insist on a nuclear bomb shelter under the clinic.

In the late 1960s and early ‘70s, Gibson traveled in a sporty Oldsmobile Toronado with a nurse-anesthetist on a route that spanned hundreds of miles and took in six other communities, doing surgery after surgery. In one year, he did 880 surgeries.

“I’ve always compared this to Cy Young’s winning game record,” said Rogers. “Hard to believe, and no way it could be done now.”

In addition, Gibson took time to start several businesses on the side, including a bank in Waco and a real estate development company.

His ability to plan ahead helped him with his corporate interests, too, friends said.

Gibson’s experience in construction gave him the confidence to provide expertise in the construction of church projects, and when the Kmart distribution company representatives said they doubted the property would suit, Gibson had bulldozers on the site within hours to correct the lay of the land, and won the contract for the city.

“He could get things done like nobody’s business,” said B.F. Risinger, with First Baptist Church. “He had innovative ideas, but was very considerate of other people and very compassionate. I saw him care for people who just didn’t have anything, and that didn’t slow him down one bit.”

He was also heavily involved in local and national politics, and preferred conservative leaders who were Texans first, including Lyndon Johnson and Phil Gramm. He served on the college board, helping stabilize the institution, and is remembered with a building on campus.

Gibson also led the charge, with Dr. Dave Campbell, to get the new hospital built.

“It’s hard to overstate his impact to the community,” Rogers said.

A scientist at heart, Gibson was fascinated with technology and was doing early work on vascular surgery, even before he’d seen it demonstrated. The tale that he once used a garden hose inside a patient while his assistant went to fetch a real vascular graft are true, according to Dr. Bob Kingman.

“I’ve seen the op report,” Kingman said, chuckling. “He was on the forefront of everything.”

Later in life, Gibson’s strength was in his vast experience, Kingman said.

“Dr. Middleton and I had a saying ‘We need to ask Louis, because if Louis hasn’t seen this it doesn’t exist,’ ” Kingman said. “He was our fallback in situations like that.”

Gibson’s mother, Jewel, was a smart, educated woman who worked as a professor at Sam Houston. She summed up her surgeon son in this way: “Louis can brag, but he can back it all up,” Bone recalled.

In the end, the dream of a clinic for Corsicana was destroyed from within, as the doctors sold their interests to an outside company that managed to leave them deeply in debt, and no longer in control. Gibson had argued against the sale, but was outvoted. It was later sold to Trinity Mother Frances, and when promises of a second hospital were abandoned and the clinic restructured again, most of the doctors left to other towns, or to the new offices constructed by the hospital.

By then, Gibson had already resigned to become director of medical director of prisons in Palestine. His legacy remained, however, in a thriving, modern hospital, in the expectations of a community that demands medical excellence, businesses he either started or helped lure to the community, and a generation of doctors who were inspired by his example.

“He was good to be supportive, even after you came here and thought ‘whoops, this is a little small,’” Rogers said. “He reinforced the mission and you always felt like a better doctor after you had a session with Dr. Gibson. You were more confident. He was never one to tear down. He has four fine children but he also had bunch of adopted ones here who all saw him as a father figure.”

Services for Gibson will be at 2 p.m. Saturday at the First Baptist Church in Corsicana.

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Janet Jacobs may be reached via e-mail at jacobs@corsicanadailysun.com

        

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