If you want to get a picture of Dr. Walter Rose’s impact on people’s lives in Indianola for the past five decades, just listen to this quote:
“Since 1965, I imagine I have delivered over 5,000 babies,” the longtime physician says.
In recognition of that service, a steady flow of friends, patients and colleagues celebrated Rose’s career Sunday in the lobby of Community Bank.
“We’re going to miss him, but I believe he’ll be back,” Jim Woods, retired former clinic administrator for the Indianola Family Medical Group, said.
A bevy of hugs and well wishes were thrust upon the retiring physician, including proclamations from the city, the clinic and South Sunflower County Hospital.
Rose, 84, thanked everyone for coming out. He said in retirement, he is just going to rest, take care of his wife and the extensive list of “honey-do’s” she’s prepared for him to finish.
As Woods and others who remarked on Rose’s time in the Delta stated, for over 54 years Rose has been serving the people of Sunflower County. And besides his work in medicine, a big part of that has been annual mission trips to Honduras.
In 1982 Rose had his first opportunity to go, and he and Woods along with a team of about 90 people have been traveling back ever since. Rose plans to go again next year. He said their main focus there is to build churches, and they’ve completed 26 so far.
Seemingly fighting back tears on Sunday, Woods, who is also a pastor, extolled on how the dedicated doctor had lived out his faith “day in and day out,” mentioning Rose’s 35 mission trips and his 40-year tenure as a Sunday School teacher at the First Methodist Church.
Woods also recounted how he and Rose would ride their bicycles along dirt roads, and former patients and babies he had delivered yelled out, “Hi, Dr. Rose!”
That illustrates the deep impact the Augusta, Ga., native has had here. But he only ended up in school in Mississippi because his options for going beyond junior college had run out in his home state. He said he was financially unable to go on to college because the scholarship opportunities that are available now were non-existent then.
But luckily for him one of his teachers in Georgia was an Ole Miss graduate and told him about regional scholarships for out-of-state students. After that, “I was on a bus ride to Mississippi, never been there before in my life,” he said.
Ole Miss also happens to be where he met and married his wife, Julia.
They got married while still in school, and both ended up teaching for a while in Georgia before he accepted a job offer at the then-Sunflower Junior College in Moorhead. He was a biology and chemistry teacher, and Julia was an elementary education teacher.
Rose said he had always wanted to go to medical school so he applied for a rural family doctor scholarship, but they ran out and he ended up with a public health scholarship instead, which necessitated him paying time back by working as a health officer for the state. He chose Sunflower County because he was familiar with it, and Julia was from here.
In 1965 he was called to work for Hull Brother’s Clinic, which later he and Dr. Neal Hurt purchased. It is now operated by the South Sunflower County Hospital under the name Indianola Family Medical Group.
Rose’s longevity here carries with it a wealth of experiences and knowledge. It is understandable why during Sunday’s celebration hospital CEO Courtney Phillips called Rose “the hospital’s historian.”
His ability as a chronicler extend beyond the hospital; Rose’s remembrance of Delta history is fit for the annals of Sunflower County. He practiced family medicine here during one of the most volatile times in Delta history, the 1960s, when segregation was still widespread.
In addition to building churches on their mission trips, they also bring food, shoes and medical services and for him it is a family affair. In addition to the other church groups that are now a part of their missionary journey, his daughter Julia heads up the dental team in the Central American country and his son Sammy heads up the eye clinic. He said they also have to have a pharmacy, so the Gilbows head up that area.
Rose said mission work usually engages a person for three to six months, and he couldn’t do that, so what hooked him was when they asked, “Would you be willing to give one week of your life for mission?”
They generally go in February so local farmers can go to help with the work.
According to Rose, he and Woods used to do long distance rides, 50 to 100 miles but said he had to give it up after he broke his leg in a skiing accident in Montana, and Woods also had to lay his bike down after he broke his ankle.
Rose said at one point the Hull Brothers Clinic was delivering upwards of 400 to 500 babies per year, many from Washington and Bolivar and other surrounding counties. The reason being that other doctors didn’t feel the so-called “Medicaid babies” were worth their time.
“But we did; we took them all,” he said.
He added that to this date the clinic here is the only family medical group in the state that still delivers babies by family physician. He said malpractice insurance costs and the advent of specialized obstetricians forced many family doctors to quit.
He relishes his time here.
“There’s something nice about being in a small town,” he said, adding it has given him an opportunity be a part of the community.
He acknowledges that he has seen a lot of changes over the years; paramount are the advances in medicine.
“I don’t know if you’ve got time for me to tell you all,” he said with a smile.
Rose talked about the predominance of infectious diseases that were here in the ‘60s and attributed it to the 1927 flood, noting how sharecroppers throughout the area had shallow well pumps in their front yard and outhouses in the backyard and that with the rising of the waters came the mingling of the two so that when the waters receded bacteria settled into the soil and contaminated the area wells because there were no water treatment systems in place.
The concentration then was on treating infectious diseases. Rose noted how malaria and yellow fever and so many infectious diseases, particularly those associated with gastrointestinal issues, were very prevalent in this area after the flood. He said during the mid-50s Sunflower County had more cases of polio than anywhere else in the United States. The concentration now is more on preventative medicine.
Public transportation, getting people to the doctor, segregation in the ‘60s dealing with separate hospital facilities and waiting rooms in the clinic even segregated ambulance services where white ambulance services wouldn’t pick up blacks and black ambulance services wouldn’t pick up whites are all transformations he’s experienced.
“I’ve seen a lot of changes,” Rose said.
