Retirement Letter  Dr. Graves

 It is with a great deal of happiness, but also some sadness, that I announce my upcoming retirement from the practice of medicine.  It has been a long and exciting career. It started with my premed years at the University of Texas in Austin, followed by the rigors of a medical education at Southwestern Medical School in Dallas.  After an internship in Internal Medicine in Salt Lake City and a fascinating several years in the United States Air Force as a Flight Surgeon in Thailand, I returned to Texas.  One of my classmates was still in the Air Force in San Antonio and he discussed his pleasure in working on weekends in general practice in Dilley, Texas. He encouraged me to look into this as an opportunity to do some temporary work while deciding on my still unknown specialty.

As a “country doctor” in Dilley I was quickly impressed with the charms of practice in a small town, the relationships with families, delivering babies, and assisting in surgery.  Finally, I realized that Family Practice was the most exciting medicine I could have imagined.  Every day was a new and different challenge, always stimulating.

I could have stayed in Dilley indefinitely, but about this time I met my lovely future wife, Jeanne Freeland, in Austin. She was a beginning Assistant Professor in Nutrition at the University of Texas. When we decided to marry, I ventured to Austin and visited a little clinic in South Austin.  Fortunately I was able to join and continue my newly found fascination with Family Practice at the South Austin Medical Clinic.  My thanks to my early friendships with Drs. Henry Dittert, Terry Sherman, and Joe Treadaway.  Martin Prisock, our Physician’s Assistant, was also a wonderful resource and friend.

 I have been with South Austin Medical Clinic since 1978 – 33 long and wonderful years.  I have never failed to be impressed by the competence and compassion of the doctors and staff with whom I have worked over the years.  I  feel privileged to have been associated with our current physicians, including Drs. Weidmann, Malleske, Martin, Levy and Smith, and our wonderful newer additions, Drs. Easterling and Canon.  I have the “best patients in the world” and have made many lasting friendships.  It is this aspect of being a doctor that I will be sad to give up.

 I am forever grateful for my loving family, my wife Jeanne, daughter Candy, and son-in-law Luke Hogan, and grandchildren Jenna and Kris.  I am proud that my son, Michael, is following the family tradition as a resident in Dermatology in Augusta, Georgia.  Hopefully he will return to Austin in a few years.  I am forever indebted to my parents, my father, now deceased, and my mother, still healthy at almost 90.

 After many years of practice and experience I realize that I have only scratched the surface of medical knowledge. In spite of that humbling thought, I do feel that I have the answer to continuing good health in us all.  It is a simple formula: one third good genes; one third good life style; and one third “good luck”.”  Unfortunately we are only in control of a third of these factors, but that does make a significant difference.

 I am looking forward to having enough time to read, bicycle, hike, take motorcycle trips, and visit my mother and son. My wife and I intend to spend the summer in South Africa in 2012 in her current role as Professor in charge of  the International Nutrition Study Abroad program.  I hope to see the remaining wild animals before they or I am extinct!  So my life is not coming to its close: rather I am just beginning a new phase of discovery and enjoyment

 I wish all my patients, colleagues and staff good health and happiness in the future years!

 Glenn Graves MD