Texas Reads>> archiveGlenn Dromgoole

10.21.2018  Biography tells story of Dr. Red Duke

“From the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, I’m Dr. Red Duke” is the way Dr. Duke would sign off his popular, common-sense, straight-shooting syndicated health reports on TV for fifteen years. With his bushy mustache, cowboy hat and boots, James Henry “Red” Duke Jr. became one of the best-known personalities in the medical field.

Dr. Bryant Boutwell, who sat down with Duke several times in his final months for extensive interviews, has written an engaging and inspiring biography titled, naturally, I’m Dr. Red Duke(Texas A&M University Press, $30 hardcover).

In addition to his public persona, Dr. Duke was a dedicated trauma surgeon, an inspiring teacher, and the founder of the Life Flight air ambulance service at Memorial Hermann Hospital and the Texas Medical Center.

“Red Duke was a one-of-a-kind, made-in-Texas original,” Boutwell writes. “To meet him was to meet the Marlboro Man, Albert Schweitzer, and Teddy Roosevelt all in one — with a good dash of Wile E. Coyote stirred into the mix just for cussedness.”

Duke, a Texas A&M yell leader who twice almost got kicked out of school, was a tank commander, seminary graduate, ordained Baptist preacher, medical missionary to Afghanistan,  Alaska hunting guide, and fervent conservationist.

In 1989, a groundswell of support backed Duke for the position of U.S. Surgeon General when Dr. Everett Koop retired, but he didn’t get the appointment.

Duke devoted his life to his trauma patients, sometimes even to the point of living at the hospital instead of home. “His wife and children knew he had loved them,” Boutwell notes, “and loved them well. But they also knew that they had not come first.”

The trauma unit he oversaw is now the Memorial Hermann Red Duke Trauma Institute. “Red’s boot prints have been painted on the floor just inside the doorway of each trauma room for all to see — in red, of course,” Boutwell says. “People like to think that he is standing there in spirit, watching over every patient, every student, every caregiver.”

He used to ask his medical students: Who is the most important person in the operating room? The surgeon, they might reply. Wrong, he would say. It’s always the patient.

“Working with Red,” a veteran nurse noted, “was always, without compromise, giving your best and putting your patient first.”

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Glenn Dromgoole writes about Texas books and authors. Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.

>> Read his past Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life here.