Their education and careers require intense concentration and many physicians maintain this ability when they turn to leisure pastimes.
Autry Parker, MD, has a theory about the hobbies of physicians, at least those who, like him, are also musicians. Parker, part of the pain treatment team at Semmes Murphey Neurologic & Spine Institute, is a bass player for the current incarnation of the Memphis Doctors band, believes many doctors love their hobbies but face time constraints.
“As kids we all probably took music lessons, and because we're doctors, we're driven and we actually practiced,” Parker said. “Most doctors who play are pretty fair musicians. We'd like to be great, we aspire to be great, but we can't because we don't have the time.”
Parker taught himself to play bass at the old Wooddale Junior High. "One day the homeroom teacher, who was also the music teacher, took the bass out of the closet – (Parker marveled that "every school had a bass" at the time) – and handed it to me, and said, 'We need you to play the bass.'" He admired that teacher and met the challenge.
Parker, now 54, turned his attention to medical science after his father confronted him in high school with the question: "Son, are you going to be a musician or are you going to get a real job?" But he's grateful for his music and the camaraderie it creates.
“Music is so different from what we do, it gives us an outlet,” he said. “Bass players can't play by themselves, so I'm always trying to find bands to play with.”
Parker said the most recent Memphis Doctors collaboration includes the neurosurgeon Jeff Sorenson, MD, who also practices at Semmes-Murphey; Neal Beckford, MD, an otolaryngologist who plays saxophone; Lee Schwartzberg, MD, an oncologist who plays keyboards; and Marty Weiss, MD, an internist who plays drums. They perform mostly Memphis soul tunes like "Soul Man,' and "Sweet Soul Music."
Robert Klingbeil, director of institutional sales at Amro Music, easily named many doctor-musicians, among them the ophthalmologist Bill Hurd, MD, who plays saxophone in his jazz quartet and has recorded with Kirk Whalum and Isaac Hayes; as well as pianists Aileen Gayoso, MD, an internist; Sam (Jay) Cox, MD, an obstetrician and gynecologist; Owen Tabor, MD, a retired orthopedic surgeon; Jim Andrews, MD, a pulmonary/critical care physician with Mid-South Pulmonary Specialists who has performed a number of concerts to support St. Jude; and Lloyd Finks, MD, a hospitalist at Methodist University Hospital.
Finks, 58, switched from business to medicine in his 30s after making a small fortune in marine supply sales and losing it in a publishing venture. He said the only thing he held onto after his youthful financial fiasco was his piano, and he made three promises to himself: "I wouldn't sacrifice my health; I would try not to lose my sense of humor and try never to lose my music." (He's also kept the second promise: when asked about his hobbies, he said, “You mean raising prize snails?”)
“I've been playing music pretty much all my life. I took organ lessons, and then when I was 14 or 15 I joined a rock band. I was in a pop jazz ensemble in college."
He said the only reason he interviewed for a residency in Memphis was to spend a weekend in a city that made so much music.
“There's a central theme of music that ties us all together. At the hospital I see somebody every single day that I've heard play on an album, seen in an interview, seen them play on Beale Street.”
After arriving in Memphis, Finks met his wife Shannon when she was beginning her residency as a doctor of pharmacology.
“At the time I was living downtown and had a small studio set up in my place. I asked if she sang, and she said yes, but never with an instrument. I played her (Van Morrison's) ‘Moondance’,” he recalled. “She had this magnificent voice and that was the first time she had sung to a piano. It was magic.”
The couple performs at parties, receptions and fundraisers as Zula's Child -- the name comes from Shannon Fink's grandmother -- with the musicians on bass, guitar and percussion. They performed at GPAC this spring at the annual fundraiser for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital organized by Klingbeil and sponsored by Steinway and Amro.
St. Jude also is the only beneficiary of the Mighty Electric Band, a group formed from St. Jude employees including researchers, web and video producers, computer and IT support workers. Shawn Kelly, director of St. Jude's video team who plays keyboards for the band, said the group plays mostly Memphis music and has made $133,000 for the hospital during its 10 years' existence. “We don't keep any money for ourselves," Kelly said. "We just get to pretend to be rock and rollers on the weekends.”
Of course, plenty of Memphis doctors play sports instead of music in their spare time.
The current president of the Memphis Medical Society, O. Lee Berkenstock, MD, a family practitioner at Primary Care Specialists, played saxophone and won a partial music scholarship to college, but he's currently immersed in tennis.
“It started as a couples togetherness program,” he said. “My wife thought it would be a great idea. We quickly learned that was the worst thing we could do," joking that the divorce rate among tennis couples is 80 percent.
They saved their marriage by dropping that plan. Berkenstock now plays doubles with friends and serves as a tournament physician at the Racquet Club. "My true tennis stories are all related to the pros, but they're related to medicine, not my abilities on the court," he said.
When onetime world No. 1 player Andy Roddick was in the finals at the Memphis tournament in 2011, Berkenstock treated him for sinus troubles. "I had to make locker room calls to nurse him back to health," Berkenstock said. "These (athletes) are fine-tuned sports cars. It's like running over a pebble when you're a fine-tuned sports car, for those folks it plays in their head.”
Mardy Fish gave Berkenstock a butt slap in the locker room after the doctor helped the player recover from too much celebrating with Tylenol and Pepto-Bismol. But Berkenstock's most dramatic role unfolded when he treated a player whose finger was swollen during the 2012 women's doubles final at the tournament. Her ring couldn't be cut off to stop the swelling.
“They were gonna default the match. And a lot of people had come to see it,” Berkenstock said of stepping up for what he calls his "MacGyver moment.” He used a racquet string as a tourniquet and was able to slip the ring off. The match went on.
Berkenstock says his tennis game is all about relationships. His tennis coach Dan Singer has become a close family friend. In fact, one of Berkenstock's daughters was a flower girl in Singer's wedding, and the doctor delivered Singer's first child.
- Earle Weeks, MD, an oncologist, ran track in high school and now he's a state-hopping marathon runner in his free time. Four years ago, he completed his goal of running in a marathon in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., and he's more than halfway through completing a second round, with 29 states behind him and 21 plus the nation's capital to go.
“It gives me a goal, something to shoot at," Weeks said of the state countdown. "You don't have to be very good at it; you just have to be persistent. This is something that you can get old doing.”
Weeks, 58, ran his 85th marathon on July 4 in Portland, Oregon. He's on call every fourth week in his four-person practice, so he has to plan his marathon schedule well in advance.
Victor Carrozza, communications director at the Memphis Medical Society, knew of at least three accomplished photographers among the society's members: Thomas Gettelfinger, MD, an ophthalmologist; David Sloas, MD, a gastroenterologist; and Robert Laster, MD, a radiologist.
Sloas also is a partner in a Napa Valley and Oregon winery run by Michael Dragutsky, MD, gastroenterologist, who is president of Gastro One.
Dragutsky said his highly regarded Cornerstone Cellars recently received an order from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for two cases of its Oregon pinot noir.
“We knew they had tasted our wine before,” Dragutsky said of the residents of the White House.
He says he was a novice wine drinker in 1991 when Sloas called and asked: "Do you want to buy five tons of grapes?" The offer had come from the Dunn Vineyards -- "Its grapes were spectacular," Dragutsky said -- and from its first release of 300 cases Cornerstone has grown to 20,000 cases this year.
“When the economy started going south in 2009, a lot of grape and vineyard opportunities were available because of cash issues,” Dragutsky said. “We increased quantities, but also varieties and we recruited partners in Memphis. We have a small village of partners in Cornerstone including several Memphis doctors.”
Mark Mills, MD, a radiologist, also is enamored of plants, but his require a greenhouse. He began growing orchids about 1975, when he was 15 and read a book about them. "I thought, 'Oh my gosh, this is the coolest thing,' and I saved my money from cutting grass and ordered plants through the mail."
He now has more than 1,000 orchids, predominantly from Southeast Asia, in the greenhouse at his home. “I collect rare and unusual plants from around the world. Most of my orchids, people are like, 'This is an orchid?'"
He calls it his "science nerd hobby” and has won national awards with his plants, but says competition doesn't drive his interest.
“There's always something new, always something you've never seen before. It's endlessly fascinating to appreciate the diversity in nature, how different all these plants are, how they live, how they reproduce, how they are pollinated in nature."
But there's a "constant challenge to recreate their environment." He had a lesson in that challenge early, when he was away at college. "I had a small greenhouse and the heater failed, I lost all of my plants. If that happened today it would be a big disaster. Now I have all sorts of back-up alarms and heat."
Mills also keeps hundreds of orchid books in his library, as well as orchid paintings and wood carvings. "There would be no doubt about my fascination with orchids when you walk in my house."
Photos:
Dr. Jim Andrews, Dr. Earle Weeks, O. Lee Berkenstock,