[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 19336-19338]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     TRIBUTE TO DR. RUSSELL DOHNER

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, many times in life we are in a doctor's 
office, and many times in life it is a tense, worrisome moment when we 
are waiting for that doctor to make a diagnosis or to tell us what we 
need to know about ourselves or someone we love. There are great 
doctors, and we hope that we are in the room with one at that moment. 
There are great doctors

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who are extraordinary surgeons and great researchers, but there are 
also great doctors who are caring, healing professionals who are there 
when we need them the most.
  I wish to tell a brief story about one of them from my home State of 
Illinois, an exceptional man. Dr. Russell Dohner is a family doctor who 
retired quietly in October at the age of 88. He had been a practicing 
family practitioner in Rushville, IL, a small farming community in 
central Illinois, for 58 years. Dr. Dohner is the only doctor many 
families in Rushville have ever known, but the longevity of his career 
is only one small reason they love him.
  For many families in Rushville and the neighboring towns, Dr. Dohner 
was a one-man solution to the problem of unaffordable health care. When 
he started practicing medicine in 1955, he charged the going rate 
around town for an office visit: $2. In 1970, with an apology, he had 
to raise his fee. His fee for an office visit was raised to $5, and 
that is where it stayed for 43 years. If families couldn't pay, Dr. 
Dohner would quietly signal to his office manager: No charge this time. 
He never, ever accepted medical insurance payments--said it wasn't 
worth the bother.
  In 58 years as Rushville's family doctor, Dr. Dohner never--never--
took a vacation. He worked 7 days a week. He started each day at the 
25-bed hospital, Culbertson Memorial, where he checked on every single 
patient at the hospital.
  At 10 a.m. he was in his office--a red brick storefront on the town 
square--to see his patients. There were no appointments. Dr. Dohner saw 
people in the order they arrived. Years back, he used to see 50 
patients a day. His rule was if you were in his office by 5 p.m., he 
would see you, even if it meant working late into the night. The local 
pharmacy down the block stayed open until Dr. Dohner called to say he 
had seen his last patient.
  But that wasn't the end of Dr. Dohner's day. After he saw his last 
patient in the office, he headed back to his hospital. That was his 
home away from home, as he called it. He ate dinner and went back to 
the hospital to check on his patients.
  He made house calls for patients who were too sick or frail to get to 
his office. He visited his patients in nursing homes.
  He took off a half day each week, Thursday afternoon. First he went 
to the local Rotary lunch and then, back in the day, he might even 
consider going fishing. The only time anyone in Rushville can remember 
Dr. Dohner leaving town was for a medical conference.
  A few years back he had quadruple bypass surgery himself. The day he 
came home from the hospital, he went to work for a few hours.
  Garry Moreland is a co-owner of the pharmacy down the street from Dr. 
Dohner, and he said: ``Healing is more than a dedication or a 
commitment, it's a calling.''
  Tim Ward, director of the foundation for Culbertson Memorial 
Hospital, said of Dr. Russell Dohner: ``He's the closest thing we have 
to a saint.''
  Dr. Dohner's staff was just as dedicated as he was. His sister 
Clarice, who died in April, helped him set up his practice in 1955. She 
helped him buy his first car so he could make house calls and she 
managed his office for more than 40 years.
  Edith Moore, his office assistant, died last July at the age of 85, 
working right up to the day of her death.
  Rose Busby, one of Dr. Dohner's two nurses, retired about a year ago 
in her late eighties.
  Nurse Florence Bottorff worked for Dr. Dohner for 50 years until he 
closed his office. She finally quit her nursing career at age 90.
  Russell Dohner grew up on a farm just north of Rushville, outside the 
little town of Vermont, IL. He says he inherited his work ethic from 
his parents, who taught their seven kids the importance of working hard 
and taking care of others.
  He was inspired to become a doctor by the town doctor who treated him 
for seizures when he was a child. After he served in the Army in World 
War II, he went to Western Illinois University on the GI bill and then, 
in the early 1950s, Northwestern University in Chicago, where he went 
to medical school.
  He thought he was going to stay in Chicago and be a cardiologist. 
Instead, he became the heart of a small town. The long-time family 
doctor in Rushville was retiring and persuaded the newly minted Dr. 
Dohner to come home for just a year or two to fill the void. Well, the 
years stretched into decades and Doc Dohner found he just couldn't 
leave. There was always somebody who needed a helping hand.
  The decision to stay in a small town cost him his marriage, but that 
was all right. Dr. Dohner said his patients were his family.
  Similar to George Bailey in ``It's a Wonderful Life,'' it seems Dr. 
Dohner has touched and enriched the lives of almost everyone in this 
small town. He estimates he has delivered 3,500 babies, more than the 
entire current population of the city of Rushville. Among those he 
brought into the world are Rushville's mayor and half of the staff at 
the local hospital. He once climbed down into a coal mine to help 
rescue four men.
  Lynn Stambaugh is the CEO at Culbertson Memorial Hospital. Her 
younger sister suffered seizures as a baby. She remembers Doc Dohner 
coming to their house and sitting beside her sister's crib all night 
long to make sure she was going to be OK.
  Carolyn Ambrosius recalled for a local reporter that her mom became 
pregnant at the age of 41, and a doctor in Springfield told her that 
either she was going to survive or the baby would survive but not both 
of them. She went home to Rushville in tears, and then she met with Doc 
Dohner. She remembers the Doc told her mother: God's going to take care 
of us, and I am going to help. Doc Dohner came to the house every day 
to check on Carolyn's mom and often stayed to have dinner with the 
family. Today, Carolyn Ambrosius's baby brother is a healthy middle-
aged man.
  Family doctors such as Doc Dohner are a disappearing breed. Only 2 
percent of all medical students in a recent study expressed interest in 
practicing primary care as a general internist. Most medical students 
choose a more lucrative specialty field. In the United States, we are 
now short approximately 9,000 primary care doctors. The situation is 
not getting any better. In the next 15 years we are going to face a 
shortage of more than 65,000 primary care doctors.
  Stephanie LeMaster is one of that special 2 percent, though. 
Stephanie grew up in Rushville. As a little girl, she wanted to be a 
nurse like her mom and her grandmother. At her mother's suggestion, she 
interviewed Doc Dohner for a fourth grade--fourth grade--school 
project. Listening to him talk about his love of doctoring, she changed 
her plans. Stephanie LeMaster is now a second-year medical student at 
Southern Illinois University. She says:

       They tell me I should be the next Dr. Dohner, but I'm not 
     sure I can live up to him. He's the only one like him.

  Dr. Dohner has been recognized by State and national organizations as 
one of the best country doctors in America. He has been profiled in 
People magazine, featured on the ``Today Show,'' and he was the grand 
marshal for the Illinois State Fair parade this year. In September, the 
town of Rushville unveiled a bronze statue of Dr. Dohner in the town's 
Central Park. It is about 200 feet from his old office. The statue 
depicts Dr. Donor seated on a park bench with a child listening to his 
heart through a stethoscope.
  Besides doctoring and a little bit of fishing and the Rotary Club 
meeting, Doc Dohner also loves trees. Rushville mayor Curt Lunt 
estimates the doctor has donated thousands of trees to the town over 
the years.
  It has been said you have to have faith in the future to plant a 
tree. The trees of Rushville symbolize not just Doc Dohner's faith in 
the future but also his love for that community that became his family.
  Retirement is taking some adjustment for Doc Dohner. The last time he 
took a full day off he was in the Army in World War II. He refused to 
let the folks of Rushville hold any kind of retirement reception for 
him or run a

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story about him in the local newspaper. He said plenty of people retire 
every day and nobody makes any fuss over it. But few people touch a 
town as deeply as Dr. Dohner--Dr. Russell Dohner. He touched Rushville 
and the other small farm towns around it in such an amazing way.
  You can be sure this holiday season, as they have for so many years, 
there are many people who count among their blessings that great Dr. 
Dohner, who served Rushville, IL, and America for so many decades.

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