This King wears a white coat

Published 3:30 pm Saturday, April 18, 2020

For a man who was a distance runner in high school and college, Wes King’s life has been a sprint.

Earn a degree in biology in four years at Georgia Tech and get accepted into medical school. Check. 

Graduate in four years with an M.D. from the Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans. Check. 

Join the Navy, completing an internship and residency at San Diego Naval Hospital and a fellowship in pulmonology at Bethesda (Md.) Naval Hospital. Check. 

Run his own practice in his hometown of Milledgeville for 30 years, caring for hundreds — maybe thousands — of patients. Check.

Join Mercer Medicine in Macon as a pulmonology provider and also serve as a professor at the Mercer University School of Medicine. Check. 

His formula is simple.

4 a.m.: Rise and shine in order to do patient paperwork.

Around 7 a.m.: Leave his house for the Fall Line Freeway and the drive to Macon so he can be at his office by 8 a.m.

About 5 p.m. (or later, depending on work-in appointments): Leave for the drive home.

8 p.m.: Go to bed. 

Monday through Friday, rinse and repeat.

Asked a couple of years ago if he ever thought about retiring, he nodded yes. But he’s still at it, much to the pleasure of his patients.

“He walks on water,” said Ann Bertoli. “Anybody you talk to, they think he’s the most wonderful person in the world.”

“He’s excellent,” said Gayle Durham. “I can’t say enough good things about him. He’s very compassionate. I trust what he says. He discovered a problem that I didn’t even know I had. He probably saved my life.”

BALDWIN DAYS

In high school at Baldwin, King laughed that he was “skinny and awkward.” 

But he was on Baldwin’s first wrestling team his senior year (in the 128- or 132-pound weight class) until breaking his collarbone early in the season. He was the first wrestler to compete in the first match against Northside of Warner Robins. 

“If I consider myself anything athletic, it was running,” King said. “My view was that I could beat anybody in Baldwin County and in the surrounding counties at running long distances.”

He held the Baldwin school record in the mile run for more than 20 years. 

He had more brains than brawn. He had his eye on going to Georgia Tech and then to medical school. James Dewberry, who attended Tech before becoming an orthopedic surgeon in Savannah, was his role model.

And most importantly in high school, he met Vivian Cox, the girl who would one day become his wife. 

Vivian was a year older than Wes. She was the solo baton twirler in the band and she dated David Rogers, the quarterback on the football team.

“I couldn’t compete with that,” Wes said, smiling.

But he was good at talking to girls. “I didn’t date ’em, but I talked to them,” he said, laughing this time. “I escorted Linda Hitz the year she won Homecoming queen. I’d escort them at halftime, then hand them off to their football-player boyfriends after the game.”

Wes said he knew Vivian liked him when he began dating other people in his senior year. 

“She didn’t like any of the girls I was dating,” he said.

They drifted apart for a couple of years with Vivian at Georgia College and Wes at Georgia Tech. They ran into each other at his grandmother’s funeral, talked some and eventually got back together.

They wanted to get married his senior year at Tech, but their parents persuaded them to wait until after his graduation. 

Their wedding was low-key, with some family and his best friend at Georgia Tech, who came down from Tennessee, attending.

“Rev. John Campbell at the Presbyterian Church married us,” Wes said. “My cousin brought a cake. We spent our honeymoon at Jekyll Island.”

PERFECT WIFE 

After the honeymoon, they started moving into an apartment in Augusta. Wes would attend the Medical College of Georgia, and Vivian, who had earned a degree in special education at Georgia College, would teach in nearby Harlem, Ga. 

Wes had wanted to attend medical school at Tulane, but it came down to cost: $10,000 a year at Tulane vs. $800 at the Medical College of Georgia. At the last minute, the Navy agreed to pay for his medical school expenses in return for his service in the military. 

So they packed up again and moved to New Orleans. The first year, they had to live in a downtown hotel on Canal Street that the city had given to Tulane after it was condemned. 

“It was awful,” King said. “In New Orleans, they don’t have rats. They have nutria, which are as big as possums. The Tulane campus was beautiful, but the medical school was downtown next to a hospital, like in many big cities.

“The one good things is that we saw the Mardi Gras parade and all we had to do was walk out our front door.”

Four years of medical school at Tulane were paid back by 10 years in the Navy. They spent three years in San Diego, two years at Portsmouth, Va., and five years at Bethesda, Md.

“I have to be the luckiest person in the world,” Wes said. “I’ve got the best wife, ever. And I think back that she came close to leaving me the first year of medical school. 

“Vivian envisioned — like most wives do — that she was marrying Prince Charming, and I was going to take care of everything. It took her about a year, and she figured out that I was worthless about taking care of things. She took the checkbook away from me because I couldn’t keep it balanced. In our 45 years of marriage, I have written — on my own — two checks. And they were for something I wanted.”

Wes said he learned an important lesson from a captain in the Navy.

“He said, ‘Son, you need to be an old-fashioned guy. You need to be the head of your household. You need to be the boss. I’m telling you, I make the important decisions. Fortunately, in the last 40 years, there have not been any important decisions to be made in my household.’ “

Wes could remember only one decision he made when he knew Vivian was going to disagree.

“It was our first year in the Navy in San Diego,” he said. “My shift at the hospital was 30 hours on and 18 hours off. I was exhausted. 

“I was driving home one day. We had an old beige Malibu — an ugly car. I drove by a Volkswagen dealership and saw this pop-top VW camper. So I went in there and I bought that sucker. I knew I was going to get a whipping when I got home.”

As it turns out, the Kings had two of their three children in San Diego. The wound up traveling all over Southern California. They spent one Christmas in Yosemite National Park. They couldn’t afford hotel rooms, but they could afford $5 for a campground, Wes said.

“Now, if you ask Vivian the best decisions I ever made, first would be marrying her. Second would be buying that VW camper,” Wes said.

RUNNING STORIES 

Two quick running stories that help define Wes King.

First, he was on the Georgia Tech cross country team during his freshman year. 

The Tech team ran in a race at Callaway Gardens that had more than 300 runners. The Florida Track Club, which featured Frank Shorter (the marathon gold medalist in the 1972 Olympics) and Jack Bacheler (a two-time U.S. Olympian distance runner), won the race. Georgia Tech finished second. 

King finished in the top-30, “better than I’ve ever run before or since. It was one of those moments that Joseph Campbell (“The Power of Myth”) talks about when you know you’ve done your best. I felt the exhilaration. I felt I’m never going to be this good again, just being close enough to see Shorter and Bacheler finish.”

Of the seven Georgia Tech runners, five counted. King’s time counted.

“It was the one race while I was at Tech that I made a difference,” he said.

The second story involves Gail Lane Thomason, one of King’s classmates at Baldwin High.

When her daughter Haley was one month old, Gail got an infection and the doctor gave her penicillin. She had a severe reaction and was hospitalized.

“The doctor said he was referring me to a new internist in town,” Gail said. “He said, ‘You’re going to love him.’ A few minutes later, in walks Wes. He didn’t recognize me. I was so swollen and disfigured from the hives and welts. And of course, I had a different last name” after marrying Andy Thomason. 

“He introduced himself and we talked, then he left to write orders. I told Andy who he was. When he returned, Andy said, ‘I guess you don’t know who this is?’ I said, ‘Wes, it’s Gail Lane.’ He blushed and apologized. We talked for a while. He stayed around for most of the night because I wasn’t responding to the medication as fast as he wanted. He was great. 

“Two days later while in the hospital, I went into anaphylactic shock. The nurses called Wes and since his office was next door to the hospital, he sprinted across the parking lot and helped save my life.”  

PEOPLE MATTER

Making a difference in a cross counry race, or sprinting across a parking lot to help a patient.

Dr. Wes King cares about people. Some patient care takes time; other patients have to be cared for Stat.

He didn’t want to let his Tech teammates down, and he doesn’t want to let his patients down.

He doesn’t like the trend that medical care is becoming more impersonal, that the system is driven by how many units you see a day, not people.

He likes working at Mercer Medical because they place a high value on quality care and teaching medical students.

That’s why he keeps running the race.