When the young doctor arrived in Clarkston some 50 years ago with plans to begin the area’s first pediatrics practice, he looked around and liked what he saw.
He and his wife didn’t want to put down roots just anywhere, and they’d spent time in other small towns’Alpena, Owosso, Dublin in Ohio’looking for a place they could settle into. They wanted a place, not only to start a practice, but also to continue family farming traditions and build a life.
Clarkston was the town by which they measured all others. Clarkston, they decided, was the place to call home.
‘The people were warm and great,? said Dr. James O’Neill, who was recently honored by the Michigan State Medical Society (MSMS) for 50 years of service to his patients and the medical profession. ‘They were church-going, salt of America people. Where I came from, everyone worked hard and in Clarkston they looked like people who worked hard, too, and I liked that.?
This year, the MSMS honored 163 physicians from across the state for outstanding contributions and important roles in a medical generation distinguished by its unprecedented advancement of human health care.
In Clarkston, only one name made the list.
At 73, O’Neill continues to practice, and sees several generations of patients during long hours at Clarkston Medical Group.
‘Everything in life you do is to help people, to look after them and worry about them,? he said. ‘If, as a physician, you go home at night and you’re not worried about five or six or 10 people, you’re not doing your job.?
When the O’Neills first arrived in Clarkston, they set up a pediatric practice out of the home they still live in’the home they raised six children in’on Holcomb in Independence Township.
A few months later, they were overwhelmed with patients arriving at all hours of the day and night.
With just one exam room and a broom closet’to contain those who appeared contagious’O’Neill often ‘sewed kids up on the kitchen table.?
After two or three years, he decided it was time to set up in a real office. O’Neill moved across the street and stayed put for 35 years.
‘He’s always just been so dedicated, and he loves practicing medicine,? said O’Neill’s wife of 50 years, Mikel O’Neill. ‘Family always came first, and even when he wasn’t here for a lot of time, the time he was home was very much quality time. He’s always doing things for the kids.?
The same dedication he gives his family, she said, is also bestowed on his patients.
‘He’s always calling to check and see how they’re doing,? she said. ‘He’s always been that way.?
In 1997, he moved Clarkston Medical Group to its current location at 6770 Dixie Highway, but as the practice continues to grow, O’Neill and the center’s vastly expanded staff are looking forward to a new home in the McLaren Health Care facility going up on a nine-acre parcel across town.
But as much as things change and grow, others stay the same. O’Neill’s commitment remains. After 50 years, the doctor is still making house calls, and claims the practice is an invaluable learning tool for him.
‘You learn about a family’s circumstances and difficulties when you visit them at home,? he said. ‘You also learn a lot about yourself. You think you’ve clearly explained things and what to do, but you get out there and find out they don’t have enough money and didn’t fill the prescription, and they’re afraid to tell you how bad things really are.?
For O’Neill, the idea of looking after others is just part of who he is’who he’s always been.
Along with a large, extended family, O’Neill grew up on a beef ranch in Williston, North Dakota?13 miles, he said, from where Sitting Bull surrendered’in a home with no electricity, no plumbing and no central heat’just a big cook stove.
He started school at the age of four, and attended lessons in the one-room schoolhouse when it rained. Otherwise, he’d be out in the fields harvesting or planting corn, like everyone else.
As he grew older, part of O’Neill’s education included a perceptorship’a period of supervised practical experience and training’alongside several local doctors who encouraged and mentored him.
Beginning around age 13, he scrubbed in, held retractors, assisted with medical procedures, watched and learned.
At 16, he headed off to St. Thomas College in St. Paul Minnesota, graduated in three years, entered medical school at St. Louis School of Medicine, where he and emerged at the top of his class.
He and Mikel, whom he’d met when he was a freshman in medical school and she was a freshman at a small Catholic college nearby, moved to Detroit, where he completed his pediatric residency in pediatrics at Henry Ford Hospital.
There, O’Neill worked with Dr. Conrad Lamb on the first pump in heart surgery for children.
‘It was a difficult time because there were a lot of failures on it,? he said. ‘We’d get them through surgery and they did perfectly fine. Two days later, they’d get (a high temperature) and we’d lose them.?
Most of the children, he said, were undergoing surgery for birth defects such as holes in the heart or vessels that were on ‘backwards? and therefore incorrectly routing blood.
After a successful surgery, the children would develop edema of the brain’swelling inside the brain, as it turned out, caused by micro-bubbles forming when the blood ran through a machine during surgery.
In 28 days, O’Neill said, doctors corrected the problem and the future of medicine looked very bright.
‘I was still a pup and a very small part of it,? he said. ‘But when we were in medical school, no one would even touch a heart in a human being’it couldn’t happen. We went from no intervention to total intervention’rerouting blood in the heart, putting patches on holes. We were getting all the new antibiotics all the new surgical procedures’it was a very exciting time in history.?
John F. Kennedy, O’Neill recalled, had just been elected president, and across the country, Americans were energized.
‘There was this feeling’we can do anything, go anyplace,? he said. ? It was a very inspirational time. The United States was an unchallenged world power. It looked like nothing could stop this county. There was no horizon in medicine we couldn’t climb over.?
In 1960, O’Neill was recruited by Dr. Rockwood Bullard to start a pediatric practice in Clarkston.
They bought the old Ford farm on Holcomb and settled in.
Today, with grandchild number 14 due in August, they still call it home.
In the next 50 years, O’Neill said gene splicing and transplants that look like science fiction could become commonplace.
‘There will be moral problems, people who say ‘the sky is falling, we can’t do this,?? he said. ‘But people in medicine are extremely ethical, and they’re worried about moral intrusions. They’re not going to rush headlong into doing something immoral.?
O’Neill also said he expects to see medical advances made with the growth hormone, allowing minimization of Alzheimer’s Disease, arthritis and overall aging.
He also remains enthusiastic about farming, and continues, nearly every day, to go out planting trees.
Staying up to date with political and social issues is also important, and just a short conversation with the doctor reveals his care and concern for others transcends medicine and reaches out to touch the great many small pieces that make up life’s whole picture. For him, it’s just part of looking after people.