Tales of Baytown’s Medicine Man

 

A profile of Louis B. Hughes, M.D.
story and photos by jonathan nelson

 

Once upon a time, a kid who had been sent to a military academy for being something of a cut-up took a zoology class and found that he enjoyed dissecting frogs. After 55 years of practicing family medicine, delivering more than 5,000 babies and performing countless surgeries and procedures, TAFP’s 2003 Family Physician of the Year has no plans to slow down.

  

“I tell my wife all the time, I feel like I’m retired,” says Louis Bond Hughes, M.D., of Baytown.

Retired.

The word seems strange coming from his mouth.

What he means is that for 46 years, he owned a private medical practice. He had bills to pay and employees to manage, benefits to arrange and equipment to buy. Then in 1999, he joined the team at the San Jacinto Methodist Hospital Family Practice Residency Program as a fulltime faculty member, where he had been teaching residents on a voluntary basis since 1982.

These days, Hughes doesn’t have the operational responsibilities of running a practice and he sees fewer patients in the hospital’s family practice clinic than he did in private practice. He shrugs and grins. “I just work here.”

Hardly, says Clare Hawkins, M.D., the residency’s program director. According to him, Hughes regularly works 80 hours a week and is on call as often as anyone at the program. Maintaining full obstetrical and surgical privileges, Hughes practices a broad scope of medicine. “He really serves in the capacity of a father figure for the other faculty,” Hawkins says. “If they’re having any problems with a surgery or doing a cesarean section … he steps in and teaches them as well as teaching the residents.”

Hughes is 76 years old, and he keeps a routine that would exhaust most people half his age. He wakes up at 4:30 a.m. each morning and spends 30 minutes reading the Bible. Then it’s downstairs to brew a pot of strong coffee with chicory, one of the his and his wife’s many South Louisiana traditions. The doctor’s wife, Edwina Hughes, grew up in New Orleans, where they met while Dr. Hughes studied medicine at Tulane University.

As the coffee brews, the couple head out to the street for a brisk walk. They’ve lived in Baytown for 45 years, so they know everyone in the neighborhood, commenting on how lovely this person is or what a great job that person does. At each home of a widow or widower, Dr. Hughes splits off from his wife, jogs to the driveway, picks up the newspaper, jogs up to the front door and leans the paper against it. Then he sprints back to catch up with Mrs. Hughes. He does this about a dozen times during the walk.

On rainy mornings or when the temperature is below 60 degrees, Mrs. Hughes doesn’t accompany her husband, so he jogs the whole route. He says he gets about the same exercise either way.

When they return home, Mrs. Hughes goes back upstairs. She likes her husband to bring her coffee in bed. A few moments later, he’s back downstairs wearing swimming trunks. It’s time for laps in the backyard pool.

At 7 a.m., Mondays through Thursdays, the Hughes attend morning mass at their Catholic church and on those days, Dr. Hughes arrives at the hospital a little before 8 o’clock. On Thursdays after Dr. Hughes gets home, the couple attend a two-hour Spanish class at the local community college. Being quite the socialite, Mrs. Hughes often arranges parties for the class. She loves to play hostess and she says her favorite parties are those with 50 or 60 people. “Louis prefers a party of eight,” she says.

“Six,” he replies.

  
Left: Hughes and two residents under his tutelage confer during the morning’s obstetrical rounds. On the left is Nadeem Malhi, M.D., who will soon become chief resident at the program. On the right is Candice Demattia, M.D., who is following in her father’s footsteps in family medicine.  

Right: Hughes and Demattia examine a newborn.

The doctor’s routine changes a bit on Fridays, when mass is celebrated at 8 a.m. This allows just enough time for a weekly visit to the doughnut shop. The patrons all know the Hughes, of course. They share news of friends and some stories about flying. Dr. Hughes has been flying airplanes ever since he was a U.S. Navy Flight Surgeon with the Marine Air Group. He currently maintains his pilot license with instrument and twin-engine ratings, and flies a Piper Twin Comanche PA-30. Mrs. Hughes has her pilot license as well and recently the couple flew to Ruidoso, New Mexico for a quick vacation on the slopes. Oh yes, they love to ski and do it as often as they can.

When the woman behind the counter sees the Hughes enter the shop, she alerts the staff to put together the doctor’s regular order of six-dozen doughnuts. By the time Dr. and Mrs. Hughes have had some coffee and a bite to eat, the six boxes are ready and the doctor is off to the hospital to deliver hot doughnuts to the residency program, the maternity ward and each floor of the hospital. Afterward, he rejoins Mrs. Hughes for mass and then goes to work.

“That’s just the kind of guy he is,” Hawkins says. “[The doughnut delivery] is a tradition he developed a long time ago.”

Hughes describes it another way. “I have to bring doughnuts every week. If I didn’t, they wouldn’t know it was Friday and they’d all show up for work on Saturday.”

A sense of humor; a wealth of knowledge and experience; a discerning and caring ear; an example of the benefits of a disciplined life; steady, healing hands; an expectation of miracles; this is what Hughes offers to his patients and to the residents who learn from him. “I want you to know that I’ve got a good doctor,” says Lorena Ingram. At 100 years of age, Mrs. Ingram is Hughes’ oldest patient. “I won’t change him unless he gets tired of me and kicks me out.”

 

Many patients who come to see Hughes in the family practice clinic have been coming to him for 40 years or more. In his soft, country-doctor voice, Hughes counsels them about the ills of smoking and of being around smokers, about eating right and losing weight. “I tell my patients all the time, everything in life is made up of two things,” he says. “First you’ve got to know what you should do. Next, you’ve got to make yourself do it.”

That’s the example he sets, and though he is far too humble to acknowledge it, he’s been well recognized. The walls of his office are covered with awards and citations. There are more at his house. Among these is the coveted medal Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, given to him by Pope John Paul II for service to Serra International, a Catholic organization dedicated to fostering vocations in the church.

Hughes is an active member of the Harris County Chapter of TAFP and won the Harris County Family Physician of the Year Award. He’s been named the Most Outstanding Teaching Attending Physician for the San Jacinto Methodist Hospital Residency Program. He’s a member of the Lions Club, the Knights of Columbus, the Texas Medical Association, the American Medical Association and he’s a past president of the East Harris County Medical Society. He is a certified instructor of the AAFP Advance Life Support in Obstetrics. For 41 years, he stood on the sidelines as the team physician for Lee High School and for a while he served as Baytown’s City Health Officer. The list goes on, but the honor Hughes says he’s most proud of hangs on his office wall beneath a picture of him parasailing. It’s his 10-year service plaque that the residency program gave him in 1992.

Around the program, Hughes is revered. Everyone has something wonderful to say about him. One of the residents, W. Max Frankum, M.D., says simply that it is “awe inspiring” to have Hughes as his advisor. “The only problem I have with Dr. Hughes as a mentor and as a role model is that I know I could never live up to his standard in my own life.” Frankum says he knows why Hughes volunteered to teach at the residency program for so many years before joining the staff. “Dr. Hughes is the quintessential physician. He really and truly lives up to the Hippocratic Oath and part of that oath is to share your medical knowledge with your peers.”

Frankum and his wife have spent considerable time with the Hughes. They’ve been out in the bay sailing on the Hughes’ 36-foot sailboat. Yes, the Hughes love to sail. They love to live. As Frankum says, for them every day is exciting. “When we go snow skiing together, they’re the first ones on the slopes and the last ones to come down, and they’re the very people that want to go out and dine together and have a glass of wine together and go on tours. You know, life is exciting to them.”

When teaching the residents, Hughes gives them his undivided attention. He’s never rushed. He encourages them. He quizzes them. He lets them work. When they are unsure or unfamiliar with something, you can bet the doctor has a story that relates.

Spend a day with Hughes and you’ll get more stories than you can count, but you will have only scratched the surface. There’s the time when as a boy, he found himself with his family in a Fredericksburg restaurant where Bonnie and Clyde and their gang were eating. As Dr. Hughes tells it, the two were gunned down the very next day. He remembers that some time later he saw the infamous bullet-riddled car in which they were killed at a theater in Austin, where he grew up.

Then there’s the time he was on a Coast Guard plane that made a crash landing at sea, miles from the shore. The plane rocked on the rough waves while the crew awaited rescue. Hughes made his way to the center of the plane to wait, and with a mischievous gleam in his eye, he says he was the only one aboard who didn’t get sick.

He tells of breaking horses when he was around 13 years old. He tells of competing in the first civilian fighter pilot tournament in Atlanta, Georgia. He has many stories about how different the practice of medicine is today than it was when he began his career.

Then there are the stories about his travels with his great uncle, Captain John R. Hughes, who was a Texas Ranger for almost three decades. Captain Hughes had no children and Dr. Hughes’ grandfathers died when he was very young, so while the doctor was a boy, Captain Hughes was like a grandfather to him. The two of them traveled all over Texas and into New Mexico, camping and visiting the grave sites of desperados, most not yet forgotten in those days.

“When I was 11 years old,” Dr. Hughes says, “he bought a new Ford V8 and he didn’t know how to work the gears. He always drove a Model T. I drove him from Austin to Rockport. I could barely see over the steering wheel.”

  

With such a rich history, it’s no wonder Dr. Hughes is considered a treasure at the residency program, and future residents are in luck because he doesn’t plan to quit any time soon. “As long as I have my health, I feel like the good Lord intends you to work,” he says. “I like working, I like getting off too,” he says with a smile.

Among the most amazing traits about Hughes is the absence of worry and haste in his life. “I don’t believe in rushing,” he says. “I don’t believe in worrying. That’s just a waste of time. You know, most of the time, things are going to turn out all right. You just let the Lord take care of it. You know, many times I’ve been in surgery and I’d be really at odds as to what I should do. I stop for a minute, you know, and then go to work.”

He thinks flying has taught him to let go of worry and haste. When flying, one must stay alert and think ahead about the consequences of every action, he says. “That’s true in dealing with people — nurses, you know, on the floor, in the clinic. First of all, you’ve got to think about the fact that they’re all nice people. Love them all. That’s the answer. Treat them like you love them. Respect them — a feeling of love. That’s the answer.”

Now there’s a lesson from the doctor to all of us.