Another passion of McKay’s was politics, and Humble citizens remember how he pushed and prodded them to vote. Whenever there was to be an election, McKay would display his choices prominently outside the door to his clinic. Many folks made a regular pilgrimage to the clinic to get the Doctor’s picks.

“People said after he died that you didn’t need to worry about Dr. McKay, because he’d already voted absentee,” says Cile Watkins, a docent with the Humble Museum. “Dr. McKay always had his telephone number listed. You could call him anytime,” she says. “He did a lot for the people in Humble aside from the city, you know, other than civic things. He’s been missed.”

McKay liked to say, “It just takes 51 percent of the vote to be mayor, but to be doctor and mayor takes both patients and patience.” To be the kind of leader McKay was for medicine takes an amazing level of dedication. The list of positions he held in the Harris County Medial Society, the Texas Medical Association, TAFP and AAFP goes on and on. He was a delegate to the American Medical Association for 26 years. He served as TAFP President in 1963, and he won the TMA’s most prestigious honor, the Distinguished Service Award, in 1975.

In 1992, the AMA honored McKay with one of its greatest awards, the Dr. Nathan Davis Award, which is presented to public servants and elected officials “who have made outstanding contributions to promoting the art and science of medicine.” The awards ceremony was held in Washington, D.C., early that next year, and as Mrs. McKay tells it, Sen. Bob Dole, who was also receiving the award, was very proud of the fact that some people from Kansas had come to the ceremony.

“Dole kept telling them how many people he had from Kansas,” she says. “He had seven. So when Haden got up, we had 42 from Texas.”

The story of the McKays in Humble actually begins in Kentucky. Haden McKay, Jr., was the third Haden McKay in as many generations to practice medicine. He was born in 1908, in Bardstown, Ky. As the story goes, McKay Sr. wanted to get away from the severe winters of Kentucky. His cousin, James H. Dameron, who was himself a physician, had scouted the area around Houston. Dameron asked McKay to go with him to Texas and open a hospital, what would later become the McKay-Dameron Hospital. McKay Jr. was 11 when the family made the move to Humble in 1919. They brought with them clinic furniture, medical instruments and books from the late 1800s.

The turn of the century had brought big changes to the Humble area. Just a few years after the famous Spindletop oil gusher in Beaumont, drillers struck it big in Humble. By June of 1905, the Humble oil field had produced 2,800,000 barrels of oil. Four years later, Ross Sterling started the Humble Oil and refining Company. Sterling would go on to become governor of Texas and Humble Oil would eventually become the petroleum giant, Exxon.

After graduating high school, McKay Jr. attended Mississippi State University. He received his medical degree from the Chicago Medical School in 1936 and headed back to Humble to practice with his father.

When he arrived, the depression had sapped the town of its wealth. People were hungry and poor, and according to an article in the Humble Area Magazine, McKay considered taking a job at the local service station. McKay told the magazine that his father advised him to keep practicing medicine, saying, “Take care of the people and they will take care of you.” For McKay Jr., this became a way of life.

The two McKays built the clinic on Avenue C in 1937, and it’s believed to have been the first fireproof building in Humble. “All the walls … are plaster and red brick tiles,” Mrs. McKay says. “You just try to put a picture up!”

In 1938 the clinic opened for business. McKay Jr. used the office in the rear of the building for an apartment during the first few years of his career. He met Lillian, who was a nurse, while they were both working at St. Joseph’s Hospital, and the two married in 1941. McKay built a limestone house for her right beside the clinic where she still lives to this day, and if you go there during the spring, you’ll be in for a treat. Mrs. McKay grows some of the most beautiful azaleas you’ll ever see.

McKay enlisted in the U.S. Army as a lieutenant in the medical corps in 1942, where he served the next four years. When he returned to Humble, he had achieved the rank of major. In December of 1949, Haden McKay, Sr., died, leaving his son to carry on the practice.

Walking up Main Street, it’s easy to imagine the board walks and dirt streets of 1919. Old timers will tell you that Main Street doesn’t much resemble the Humble of the oil boom. Some of the old buildings have been replaced and many have been refurbished through the decades, but the character of the time is still there. It’s in the old floors and walls. It’s in the architecture.

The old Pangburn building on the corner of Main and Avenue A has been around since 1914. Many businesses have occupied it. Today it houses the Humble City Cafe, and for just a few dollars, you can get an excellent omelet and sausage breakfast.

The Humble Museum is just up the street from the cafe. Its rooms are filled with artifacts of Humble’s history. There are drill bits from oil rigs and pictures of the oil fields. There’s even a letter from Sam Houston describing a knife he wanted fashioned for him.

Two live oaks stand in front of what used to be the laundry, their limbs hanging over the street. Locals call them the Trees of Knowledge, because people have always gathered beneath them to whittle and think and talk about the state of things. Today there’s a cozy pub in the old laundry building.

About a block further down Main Street stands the Scheible building, which looks almost like it did in the early 20th century. Music from an upright piano sometimes drifts out onto the street through the open door of the Humble Barber Shop on the bottom floor. The barber must play between haircuts.

You can see the McKay Clinic Medical Museum from the corner of Main Street and Avenue C, and if you’re lucky, Mrs. McKay might give you a tour herself. For years she has been an important member of the Humble Museum Board of Directors. She generously gave the clinic to the museum in 2001 as a memorial to her husband and her father-in-law.

Inside the clinic, things are almost as they were when the Doctor was practicing. The rooms are furnished with the exam tables and painted metal chairs that the McKays brought with them from Kentucky. The walls are lined with McKay’s awards and images from the past. There are glass cases filled with bone-handled instruments, glass syringes and medical curios of all sorts. Bookshelves contain medical texts spanning more than a hundred years. Some of the ones used by McKay’s grandfather are handwritten.

There’s a baby scale from 1893, and a microscope from 1908. One room contains a wood-cased EKG machine from 1938. It still works, according to Susie Jackson, the last nurse to work with McKay.

Another room contains the first X-ray machine in the area. They used this machine for several years, and in another part of the clinic, you can see the developer and the racks used to dry the images.

In 1969, when the Houston Intercontinental Airport opened for business, airport officials noticed that something was interfering with their communication equipment. According to Jackson and Mrs. McKay, the officials tracked the problem to the clinic. They told the Doctor he had to stop using the machine and he did, but they eventually had to come back and remove the radioactive material from the clinic before the problem was solved.

For some, McKay’s office might be the most interesting part of the museum. Photographs from several decades are hung, depicting McKay with prominent people from all walks. Here he is with Clint Eastwood, and there with Gerald Ford. Past leaders of TMA and TAFP are memorialized here in this shrine of Texas medicine. There’s a picture of Barry Goldwater, a close friend of the Doctor’s, says Mrs. McKay.

The office is in the rear of the clinic beside the back entrance. Patients would enter through the front and people seeking advice would come in through the back. Either way, this office door is said to have always been open.

Although visitors will find it easy to lose themselves in the imagining of a time passed, the city of Humble is not a museum piece. It is a functioning, healthy community, proud of its heritage, thanks in no small part to the efforts of Dr. and Mrs. McKay. So if you’re traveling up Highway 59 north of Houston, don’t miss the chance to experience the history, wonder and charm of this lovely town, and pay a little homage to Mr. and Mrs. Humble.

Where and when

Call (281) 446-2130 for more information.