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Dr. Rob Marsh, center, examines Betty Lotts, 67, while Chris Hewitt, a family nurse practitioner student from South University, looks on.(Photo: Jack Gruber, for USA TODAY)
RAPHINE, Va. -- John Otho "Rob" Marsh has seen the world, and he could practice medicine in many places. One reason he stays here, serving the rural Shenandoah Valley, is what some local people did for him back in 1993.
Marsh, then a physician with the U.S. Army's elite Delta Force, was lying in a hospital bed in Germany. He'd just been airlifted from Somalia, where he had been gravely wounded in a mortar attack in the aftermath of the "Blackhawk Down" incident – a fierce battle in the streets of Mogadishu that left 18 U.S. soldiers dead and 73 injured. Marsh had led the medical team that saved many of those 73 lives. Two days later, he was fighting for his own.
"My local church here in Middlebrook had a 24-hour prayer vigil," Marsh says. "And I turned the corner. ... I survived." As far as he's concerned, "those people saved my life."
He says he's glad to return the favor. Marsh, 59, retired from the Army in 1996. Since then, one of the nation's most decorated military physicians has run the only medical clinic in tiny Middlebrook, Va., population 213.
More recently, he opened a bigger clinic here in the middle of a truck stop off I-81.
For his service to his neighbors – who now include a roving village of long-haul truckers – he's just been named Country Doctor of the Year.
That award is given by Staff Care, a physician staffing company. It's meant to recognize the kind of rural doctors who still treat entire communities from cradle to grave, runny noses to failing hearts. The kind who still make house calls and, in their spare time, might fight fires, teach Sunday school and run farms alongside their patients.
Marsh does all that and wants to do more. "I'm never going to give up my roots, treating the local community," he says in a break between patients. But when he heard that the owner of White's Travel Center wanted to add a doctors' office – one of a handful of truck stop clinics nationwide – he saw opportunities.
One was to treat truckers, a notoriously sedentary bunch, known for bad diets and poor sleep. Marsh says they are increasingly interested in better health. "A lot of these truckers don't have an established physician. We might be able to provide that for them," he says.
The new clinic also is a way to modernize his family practice and keep it viable. It turns out that charming Middlebrook has lousy internet service, but the truck stop has an excellent connection. That means Marsh can practice 21st century medicine, electronic records and all. Also, he says, a growing practice might allow him to hire a second physician.
For now, he's it, though he gets help from a nurse practitioner, a physician's assistant, medical students and a nursing staff that includes his wife, Barbara. And he is busy. The new clinic has, so far, attracted more locals than truckers. On this day, they include Betty Lotts, 67, a Middlebrook neighbor who attends his church, and Ronnie Brown, 57, of Staunton, who asks after one of Marsh's four children.
It is clear Marsh truly knows his patients and they know him. "He's a great doctor, a great man," says Jim McCue, 53, who has an especially long history with Marsh. The two served together at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, and Marsh delivered McCue's oldest son there in 1985. Now, McCue drives an hour from Port Republic, Va., to see him.
"He takes time to listen to people," McCue says. "He is genuinely concerned."
That concern is why Marsh still directs the care of his patients when they go to the local hospital, Augusta Health, says hospital CEO Mary Mannix. He spends about two hours there each day. These days, most solo practitioners are stretched too thin to do that, she says.
"His level of commitment to his patients is so high," says Mannix, who nominated Marsh for the award. Many of his grateful patients have heard about his history, but not from him, she says: "It's well-known that Rob prefers not to talk about it. But he is a hero."
Dr. Rob Marsh speaks with nurse Emily Williams.(Photo: Jack Gruber, USA TODAY)
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