Hugh Leedy hangs up his stethoscope

SANDPOINT — When he came to town in 1974, Sandpoint had 10 doctors.

“I think I was doctor number 11,” said Dr. Hugh Leedy. And now, after just more than 40 years of service to the community he has retired.

Times have surely changed. Back then, Leedy said, physicians did it all, from covering the emergency room, being on call 24/7, patients needing obstetric care, nursing homes visits, and house calls.

Leedy, himself, traveled throughout the area for four decades, from Bonners Ferry to the Montana border, up to Priest River and as far south as Careywood, not to mention the countless visits to his patients who live here in town. He made his last house call in April just before he retired.

“A lot of people just couldn’t get out of their homes to see the doctor,” he said. “Especially when the weather was not fit for some of them to travel. Many had trouble getting out on the bad roads.”

One never knows what to expect when making a house call. Sometimes they can be fairly amusing to say the least. One of his many and most memorable house calls was with a third-year medical student from Boise.

“There was an old cowboy named Bill who lived in Westmond, and I had been to his house before,” Leedy said. “At that time the patient was wheelchair bound. My student and I walked into Bill’s house, sat down at the kitchen table, and before long, out from the bedroom walks one of his goats! I thought my student’s eyes were going to fall out of his head! I had been there before and had the same look on my face when I first encountered the goats!”

Years ago, the University of Washington Medical School selected Dr. Leedy to be a mentor to their medical students. Leedy usually spent a month with their first-year students and also a month with students in residential rotations, and finally six months with the university’s third-year students. Leedy educated probably 20 to 25 third- and fourth-year medical students over time.

“So you get to know people pretty well when you spend that kind of time with them.” he said. “I sure had a lot of fun over the years with students.”

Currently there are well over 50 physicians in town including obstetricians, pediatricians, surgeons, ophthalmologists, hospitalists and the list most likely goes on.

“So in the ’70s, it has gone from us doing every little bit of everything when it came to medical needs in the community to today’s very specialized medicine,” he said. “With technology changing so fast it’s difficult to keep up in all of those areas without specializing in them. So there have been some very big changes in medicine since I first came to town.”

Hugh Leedy was born and educated in Ohio. He received his medical training at, and graduated from Ohio State University, and completed his internship at Spokane’s Deaconness Hospital in 1970.

He first came through Sandpoint with two Ohio State classmates in August 1969.

“And you know how the old story goes,” he said. “You’re driving across the Long Bridge, stop to look around and go ‘Wow!’ I went back to Spokane in 1970 but had somewhat decided that I wanted to try to make Sandpoint my home.”

Toward the end of his internship he met Teresa (Klatt) who happened to be from Sandpoint. Shortly after, his life took a three-year detour when he served in the U.S. Army. He was stationed in Germany but before the stint ended, he and Teresa were married there in November 1972. They returned to Sandpoint in 1974, called it “home” and opened his medical practice.

“I started the practice with Teresa,” he said. “She was a nurse and so it was initially just the two of us. We found an empty office, put a name on the window and waited for patients to show up.”

And they did.

Soon after, his sister-in-law was hired and trained as a member of the office staff, and later additional office personnel were hired.

“Over the years I’ve had long-time professional relationships with my nursing staff,” he said. “Diana Jacobson was my nurse for 15 years or so, then Tammy Thomas joined us. Shelly Russell has been with me for the last 20 years until I retired.”

Leedy’s first office was located behind what is now Vanderford’s and he practiced there until 1980.

“Up until that time a group of doctors including Ed Gould, Jack Blaisdell, Tom Lawrence, physical therapist Steve Sodorf and myself, bought what is now called the Superior Medical Building. Previously Health & Welfare operated their office in the building,” he said. “We don’t own it anymore but we were the five original members of that group.”

Leedy served the community in that building until 2007 when he, along with Dr. Tom Lawrence, joined Kaniksu Health Services. That organization came to Sandpoint in 2006 and Leedy worked with them until he retired in April.

Hugh and Teresa have had the pleasure of enjoying family life with their daughter, Alison and son, Rob. Alison was born in 1976 and is head of the Science Department at Boise High School. She married Sandpoint’s Travis Ward and they have three children — Grace, Ruben and Guthrie.

“We sent her off to college and she never came home!” Leedy chuckled.

Rob, a contractor, was born in 1978. He and his wife, Jennifer live in Coeur d’Alene with their two children — Ryan and Ella.

Speaking of children ... when asked how many babies Leedy delivered over the course of the last 40-plus years, he replied, “Oh, I lost track. I lost count really, but probably 1,500 to 2,000 or somewhere in there. We delivered a lot of babies back in those days.”

“One of the things I’ve noticed when I was just starting out in my practice was that when the doctors in town would retire or have to retire for health reasons or whatever, they just closed their doors and walked away,” Leedy said. “Their patients were just scattered to the wind. I was hoping when my time came to retire that I would not have to do that.”

That’s when doctors Leedy and Lawrence recruited other doctors to come to town, thus Kaniksu Health Services.

“I’m glad Kaniksu Health Services is here,” he said. “My patients can be taken care of. I was always interested in not just walking away from my practice and have my patients be on their own. I don’t feel like I’m leaving my patients in the lurch, which is a nice feeling.”

During his retirement years, Hugh and Teresa plan to spend much of their time at their home in Sun City West, Ariz. He has a long list of goals to keep him occupied.

“I’ll play golf three to four days a week,” he said. “I’m going to try to learn how to speak Spanish. That’s a pretty good language to have in Arizona.”

The ambitious retiree wants to learn how to play a musical instrument and try learning to play piano or violin as well.

A piece of advice he received from one of his patients long ago is a motto Leedy plans to live by during his retirement years.

“My patient said to me, ‘Plan to die young as late as possible.’ That, I believe, is the ultimate goal. In order to do that I think the evidence is pretty strong that staying active physically and mentally is the key. But of course there’s always bad luck that can trump all of that. I have lofty goals to live a long time in retirement, but you never know.”

A retirement party is being held at the Elks Golf Course Conference Room on Sunday, July 5 from 2-6 p.m. The public is welcome to wish Dr. Leedy and his family a happy retirement.