BOOK REVIEW
THOUGHTS FROM THE BEDSIDE: FROM MEDICINE TO
CHAPLAINCY AND BEYOND
AUTHOR: BILL HOLMES MD, MDIV.
PUBLISHED 2018 BY NURTURING FAITH INC. MACON, GA.
Reviewed by Elizabeth A. Amin MD
D
r. Bill Holmes has written a very
personal and compelling account
of his wanderings. He describes a
peripatetic childhood, living in 11
homes within the first seventeen
years of life, all within the city
of Louisville. He describes with
emotion the demolition of at least two
of the family’s homes on Brook and Floyd Streets where, in the
mid-late 1950s, I-65 came barreling through. Neighborhood
communities that had developed long before the construction of
the interstate highway were essentially destroyed. It was within
these communities that Dr. Holmes found spiritual and social
sanctuary at the ripe old age of 11.
He recounts an injury that he had sustained trying to climb
over a barbed wire fence. He returned home feeling faint from loss
of blood and finding his mother none too pleased at the obvious
need for a trip to the Norton Infirmary, the precursor to Norton
Healthcare, which in those days was located at Third and Oak
Streets. As mother was getting ready to take young Billy to the
hospital, two lay members of the Walnut Street Baptist Church
(WSBC) knocked on the door, were invited in and offered Billy a
chance to play basketball if he would attend Sunday School twice
a month. We do not know how the trip to Norton’s turned out.
We assume it resulted in a good outcome. It is clear, however, that
the intervention of the visitors from WSBC was life-changing for
the heretofore rather rebellious boy and his long-suffering mother.
Over the next several years, young Billy thrived within the faith
community. During high school he decided that he would very
likely become a pastor.
At the age of 17, Billy left home for Vanderbilt University where
he majored in philosophy with a minor in chemistry. Although he
felt that he was better at the latter than the former, he returned to
Louisville after graduation in 1965, and enrolled at the Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary. By the end of 1965, the dual calling,
which would guide Dr. Holmes’s professional wanderings for
the rest of his life, became apparent. He left the Seminary - on
good terms with his teachers, it seems - and entered medical
school at the University of Louisville. He remained in Louisville
to complete an internship in general pediatrics then headed to
St. Louis to embark on a psychiatry residency. That did not work
out. Three months later Dr. Holmes was back in Louisville where
he continued his training in general pediatrics and subsequently
entered private practice. Of all the patients he encountered in
practice, it was those with serious and intractable neurologic
disorders that affected him the most. In 1977, he was accepted into
a neurology fellowship program at the University of Kentucky,
where he remained until 1980. The program emphasized pediatric
neurology as a subspecialty. During this time, he rotated through
the neurology clinics in many of the towns in Eastern Kentucky.
The experience awakened his awareness of and compassion for
these people whose faith sustained them in the face of poverty,
illness and at times despair. This same consciousness sustained
him through 30 years of pediatric neurology practice here in
Louisville, 30 years in which there were serious bumps along the
way.
An integral part of Dr. Holmes' professional wanderings is
his own experience as a patient encountering serious illness:
four (major) times in all. His personal insights strengthen his
professional and pastoral service. At a time in life when many
of his colleagues would be considering retirement, Dr. Holmes
took up again the mantle that he believed he cast aside as a young
man. He pursued further studies at the Louisville Presbyterian
Theological Seminary where he earned his Master of Divinity
degree. He is committed to pastoral care and ministry and since
2011 has served as chaplain at Norton Brownsboro Hospital.
Many of us have read Dr. Holmes’ letters and opinion pieces in the
Courier Journal over a period of years. His memoir is their context
and source. Dr. Holmes wanderings may be over, but his journey
continues. Our community can be grateful for that.
Dr. Amin is a retired diagnostic radiologist.
JANUARY 2020
7