I had acne really bad when I was a teenager. My mom took me a dermatologist in Fort Smith named Dr George Lewis. Dr G. Luke Lewis, as he’s commonly called was a really nice guy and once he figured out I was an aspiring calf roper we really hit it off.
Dr Lewis told me his brother was a veterinarian in Elgin, Texas. His name was Dr. Bob Lewis. I remember that because he said everyone called him Dr. Bob. It’s been over twenty years since this story was told to me, but I think I’m getting the gist of it correct. It’s a cool story.
He said he called his brother one day and asked what he was doing. His brother said he was working on Joe Beaver and Roy Cooper’s horses. For me, shoot, that would have been like meeting two presidents. His brother seemed like a big time brain surgeon in my mind, maybe he worked in the White House or some other big time place.
My dermatologist told mom and I a story about his brother when they were kids growing up. He said their dad farmed for a living. The only tractor they had broke something inside the transmission just as it was time to harvest a crop. Their dad was depressed, he couldn’t fix the tractor and he didn’t have the money to pay someone to fix it. Their annual farm payments were due soon and they had to get the crop harvested and sold.
His little brother, aka Dr. Bob, decided one night he was going to take the tractor apart and fix it. So little Bob snuck out into the shop and began taking the tractor apart. He worked all night long. The next morning when their dad woke up he told his dad they needed to go to the part store and order this part of the tractor. He didn’t know the name of the part, but he had the broken part to take with them to the parts store.
The part came in and once again young Dr Bob worked through the night. He fixed their tractor and they got the harvest in and their family made it another year.
My doctor told this story to mom and me and then he said something I will never forget. He said you know, we both became doctors. He’s a veterinarian and I’m a dermatologist, but really all a doctor does is take things apart and remember how to put them back together. Hearing that simple twist on what makes a good doctor really helped me gain confidence to go to college. I had a hearing disability, at times I really struggled, but Dr. Lewis was one of the first doctors to give me some hope.
This week I watched the Let’s Freakin Rodeo podcast and they had Doctor of Veterinary Medicine Marty Tanner on as a guest. Doctor Tanner started out in Elgin at Dr Bob Lewis’s veterinary clinic. Today Doctor Tanner is widely regarded as one of the best equine veterinarians in the world. He goes to the National Finals Rodeo every year and checks on the horses. He did in the podcast he had 43 horses to check at the NFR last year. He learned from my dermatologist’s brother, talk about a small world!
It has been several years since I thought of my old dermatologist or the stories he told about the wonderful work his brother did in Elgin. I’m fairly certain that Dr Bob superglued a broken leg bone one time and the superglue held.
This was one of the most fascinating podcasts I’ve ever watched. I’ve said it time and time again, I was very lucky growing up to have some of the very best people coaching and training me. I had World Champion Cowboys as coaches and some of the very best veterinarians teaching me how to care for my horses. I know the difference in the common digital extensor and the lateral digital extensor, thanks to Dr Bob and his dermatologist brother.
The podcast link is below.
https://youtu.be/m5CnE7953-E?si=jNuFdtnQ1Av4EfRT
James Lockhart lives near the Kiamichi mountains in southeast Oklahoma. He writes cowboy stories and fools with cows and horses.
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