Linford Gehman ’59, a doctor serving a rural population in northern Rockingham Co. and across the border into West Virginia, still uses his iconic black bag on occasion. After graduating from what was then Eastern Mennonite College, he attended Jefferson Medical College, where he studied with Robert Gallo, one of the discoverers of the retrovirus that causes AIDS. After graduating from Medical College of Virginia in 1963, Gehman entered a residency that was cut short by a request from Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) to practice medicine in Vietnam and then Nigeria before returning to Virginia.

The journey to Vietnam marked the beginning of nearly five years of medical mission work for Gehman. He described his travels and experiences to an audience composed primarily of students and faculty in a seminar titled “Will the Glorious Respect for the Country Doctor (Health Care Provider) Continue into the Future?” this Jan. 12.

Upon arriving in Vietnam in April 1965, Gehman trained under and eventually replaced Carl Yoder, a physician MCC assigned to Vietnam long before the U.S. deployed its first foot soldiers in March 1965. Gehman worked in a hospital in the city of Nha Trang, treating the worst cases of cataracts and entropions, a complication resulting from the inward folding of the lower eyelid.

After more than three years in Vietnam, Gehman was reassigned by MCC in 1969 to Biafra, a secessionist state in southeastern Nigeria. There, he treated outpatients in conjunction with the military of the Igbo people, who failed in their efforts to secede in the three year-long Nigerian civil war. Hunger killed far more people than military weapons, causing Gehman to feel acutely aware of his privilege. “The experience was unpleasant, if not disastrous,” said Gehman of his year-long experience in Biafra. Even so, he “rather liked the adventurous aspect of medical relief work.”

When the Igbo leaders fled the country, indicating the end of the civil war, Gehman also left. He returned to the United States, refreshed his education at the University of Virginia, and began what turned into 45 years of providing healthcare through the Green Valley Clinic on Brocks Gap Rd. in Bergton, Va. (With , Gehman moves eight miles up the road to the E.A. Hawse Health Center in Mathias, W.Va., where he plans to work at least another two years, until he is 83.)

Gehman found examples throughout his life where old practices differ from modern ones. For example, he graduated about $6,000 dollars in debt, substantially less debt than most medical graduates face today. He also described performing cataract surgery “the old way, via dovetail incision through the sclera.” The “new way” is less invasive and less risky and requires no numbing or stitches. Medical charges to his patients have also increased from the maximum of $10 when he began at Green Valley Clinic.

Some things, however, never change. One might suspect that the sophistication of modern medicine has rendered the black bag carried by “horse-and-buggy doctors of years ago” obsolete, but Gehman still takes it when visiting home-bound patients.

Gehman shared his experience and contrasted his generation from the rising generation of medical doctors as part of . Students, faculty, alumni, and community members are welcome to the remaining seven seminars for this academic year.

When Linford arrived in Bergton in 1970, after a few years as a doctor under Mennonite Central Committee in Nha Trang in Vietnam and Biafra in Nigeria, he didn’t have any particular plans to stay. He and his wife Becky were newlyweds and soon they found themselves getting rooted in the community. Becky started playing piano on Sunday mornings at Valley View Mennonite Church in nearby Criders; Linford led songs. They worked together in the clinic (Becky is a nurse and also still works there one day a week), they had a son, and then they had a daughter. One thing led to another and now it’s 2014 and they’re still in Bergton, in the only house they’ve ever lived in together.

Linford and Becky met in 1963, when he was an intern and she was an obstetrics nurse at St. Luke’s hospital in Bethlehem, Pa. Both were “glued to the work,” as Linford puts it, and their personalities clicked. They corresponded while Linford was overseas, and got married when he returned to work in Bergton at the invitation of Dr. Harold ’61 and Esther Emswiler Kraybill ’60, a couple he’d gotten to know in Vietnam. (Harold worked a brief period at the Green Valley Clinic.)

Work and home distinctions have always been blurry for the Gehmans. Sometimes Linford gets out his wedges and chips a golf ball around the back yard; over the years, errant shots have cost him more than a few clinic windows. The office phone always rang at home and it still does. (The Crossroads’ interview was interrupted by a call about a chest X-ray.) On Tuesdays and Thursdays and weekends, days that he doesn’t schedule patients in the clinic, Linford shuffles through his charts and other paperwork at the office, or at the dining room table at home, or in front of the TV, watching sports (golf and football are his favorites). Before the rescue squads in the area were up and running, he was the community’s de facto first responder to emergencies. Being a doctor in a rural community wasn’t a 9-to-5 sort of thing.

Founded in 1949 by Dr. Charles Hertzler ’38, the clinic is in an antiquated building. (Linford’s 43-year streak at the clinic has nothing on Mary Lantz, a medical secretary who’s been there 57 years and still uses the same desk.) It may not remain a clinic once Linford finally hangs it up. He and his associates at the practice, including Dr. Sam Showalter ’65 and physician assistant Hanna Reinford ’05, have begun pondering how their patients will still get good care as Linford moves into retirement in his 80s. (Their most current thinking involves a gradual transition for patients to a clinic across the state line in Mathias, W.Va.)

After that happens, at some point in the next few years, Linford plans to spend more time with family and with his church. But a guy who’s always been glued to his work can only unglue himself so much. One of his big ideas these days is helping people get more active in ensuring their own well-being, making healthier choices, leading healthier lives. Retirement will free up time to work on this, maybe through church, maybe through the Ruritan Club, but definitely somehow. There will always be plenty to do.

— Andrew Jenner ’04