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Retired, Dr. Conner was in private practice as a primary care physician for 36 years
BOARDMAN
Dr. C. Conner White Jr. is an old-school family doctor who religiously keeps up with modern medicine, even in retirement.
He made house calls. He served his country in the Air Force Medical Corps, and he used wooden tongue depressors on which he drew a cat when his child patient needed a distraction.
“This was a very special cat. It had ears, eyes, paws and whiskers on the front. On the back was a tail. I would then ask, ‘Do you want a boy cat or a girl cat.’”
“The boy cats had a bow tie and the girl cats had a bow on their tails and on the top of their heads. It worked most of the time,” Dr. White said smiling, something he does a lot of.
Named the Mahoning County Medical Society’s 2015 Distinguished Physician, Dr. White, 79, says that the changes in medicine over his 36 years in private practice as a primary-care physician are “all for the good.”
“Diagnostics and medicines certainly have improved since I started my practice,” he said.
He keeps up with advances by attending medical-education lectures weekly, even during the six months of the year he and his wife of 55 years, Barbara, spend in Sarasota, Fla.
A 1954 graduate of Poland Seminary High School, Dr. White received a bachelor’s degree in 1958 from Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pa.; graduated from Ohio State University College of Medicine in 1962; and did postgraduate work at the Youngstown Hospital Association’s Northside and Southside hospitals.
After serving in 1963 and 1964 as a captain in the Air Force Medical Corps as officer in charge of the clinic at Stewart Air Force Base, N.Y., providing medical care for 3,000 on-base personnel and some 10,000 retired personnel, he established his practice in Austintown.
“One must understand that at that time, there were no emergency-room physicians or emergency medical technicians with ambulance companies. Residents manned the ERs,” he said.
“As a primary-care physician, you were responsible for your patient’s care, and you were on call 24/7. When the phone rang, you usually saw the patient at your office, on a house call or in the hospital’s emergency room,” he said.
One evening he got a call to a motel to treat a Gypsy Queen.
“There were about 10 people in the room. Fortunately, she responded to the IV meds that I gave her. One of my colleagues, who was called to the Gypsy Queen‘s motel room a few nights later, mentioned that one of the men in the room had a large knife in his belt and another a revolver. Quite frightening to say the least,” Dr. White said.
In a few years, area hospitals had hired emergency-room physicians, started intensive and coronary-care units, and the ambulance drivers became trained emergency medical technicians, drastically reducing the motel and emergency home calls, he said.
During his career, Dr. White was a member of the staffs of St. Elizabeth Hospital, Western Reserve Care Center and Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED), formerly known as the Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy.
He helped set up the Physical Diagnosis Lab for level-four NEOMED medical students at the Northside Hospital Family Practice Center, helped set up the Family Practice Center at Northside, and served as preceptor for medical students and family-practice residents.
His office served as an internship for Youngstown State University medical office assistant students.
“I have been thinking about why I loved medicine so much,” Dr. White said in accepting the Distinguished Physician Award.
“I was a small child during World War II, and very few antibiotics were available. When we were sick, my mother called the family doctor, and he made a house call. When he walked into my bed room, I immediately felt better. It may have been the little pink or brown pills that he dispensed, but Dr. Vance became my idol and role model,” he said.
“I have two loves: My family and medicine,” he said. “If I were to start my professional training tomorrow, I would definitely go into primary care.”