Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
It’s all about people for Dr. Harold Dowling – everything from his medical practice to his decision to set his roots in Sweet Home half a century ago.
Dowling was named Sweet Home’s Distinguished Citizen at the annual Chamber Awards Banquet held earlier this month.
“My thought is, it’s a great honor for a guy that didn’t contribute a whole lot,” he said, adding that he can think of many more deserving people.
Dowling was born in Seattle in 1923 and educated in the Seattle school system.
Before entering college, he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II.
He completed his pre-med studies at the University of Washington before beginning medical school.
He went out for the basketball team during his freshman year in college, he said.
“Compared to the abilities I see now, we were nothing.”
He earned the nickname “Sleepy” while playing ball.
In those days, people didn’t practice their sports year-round, he said. Now, he watches college ball on TV, but there’s “no emotional involvement until Oregon comes along.”
UW emphasized family practice, he said, and its medical school is now ranked number one in family practice.
After graduation, he left the Northwest for an internship at Indianapolis General Hospital and a general residency at Providence Hospital in Indianapolis, Ind.
After his residency, he moved to Oregon and maintained a general practice in Sweet Home from 1956 to 1971 when he moved his practice to Lebanon. In 1994, he closed that office and worked in Lebanon and Brownsville until he retired in 1999.
He stayed in Sweet Home and came to love it, rearing six children with his wife, Leota. All of his children graduated from Sweet Home High School.
“I really felt I wanted to go to a small community,” Dowling said. “I thought maybe the pressure would be less.”
He was wrong about the pressure, but he was right about the small town; and he is enjoying retirement, he said, enjoying life with a lot less pressure.
“It just evolved,” he said of his attachment to the community. “We came here. You get to know people and see the advantages of knowing people. It begins to feel like home.
“I was sentimental about this house, all the youngsters running around,” he said. “I would’ve liked pediatrics except it hurt me so much when they get sick.”
The opening of Sweet Home Charter School at the neighboring Church of Christ at 18th and Long, with all the children playing just behind the Dowlings’ backyard, has been enjoyable.
He and his wife also enjoy watching the youths skating at the park next door to the School District’s Central Office on Long Street.
Sweet Home has matured as a community, he said. It was rowdy in the 1950s when he moved here.
He started his practice with Dr. Robert Langmack. Within a short time, he established a private practice of his own, complete with x-ray and a small laboratory. After Langmack Hospital closed, his office sometimes became the treatment destination for the local ambulance service, providing “urgent care” services. Many injured loggers and mill workers were brought directly to his clinic, throwing the office schedule into disarray.
Office calls back then usually cost patients $2 or $3. Complete physicals began at $8. During the snowstorm, he found four-wheel-drive owners to take him to stranded patients.
After retiring, he has spent the years much as he did when he was officially working, caring for friends and neighbors, visiting the lonely, checking up on those housebound and providing transportation for people in need.
During the chamber awards, his involvement in the sports program at Sweet Home High School was noted by presenter Lin Gagner.
“Not only did he love sports himself, he saw sports as a way to build self-esteem in many students who might not otherwise be successful,” Gagner said.
“For many years, he served as team physician for the Sweet Home football team and could be seen weekly on the sidelines of each home game. Even after his practice moved to Lebanon, his office staff knew he had to be out of the office in time for every home game.”
After serving the program for 25 years, the high school athletic department presented him with his own SH letterman’s jacket.
“Going back to Seattle, there’s no way I’d want to go back,” Dowling said, a happy resident of small-town Sweet Home.
Sure, it was fun when he was a child in the San Juan Islands, enjoying the lakes and recreation around the Seattle area. But the same lakes and recreation are close by here, offering all kinds of opportunities for family outings.
He frequently took his children fishing and gold panning in Quartzville, instilling in all of them a love for the outdoors.
“We all breathed science, not just because we’re the moon landing and Cousteau generation, but because it was part of the environment Dad created, wrapped in the love of the outdoors,” Gagner quoted one of Dowling’s family as saying.
An observer once saw him fishing with his children along the river, the children wildly casting their lines about, tangling them and catching them in branches. The observer asked him if he was afraid he would be cutting fish hooks out one of the kids.
“Oh, there aren’t any fish hooks,” Dowling said. “I cut all the hooks off their lines before we started.”
Astronomy has been his passion, something he shared with his children.
“I’m thinking back,” he said. “My father used to read to me about simple astronomy when I was a small boy.”
The highlight of his amateur astronomy career came in 1979 when a total eclipse was visible in Oregon. Cloudy and rainy on the west, he thought, “maybe the east side’s going to be clear, so I said, ‘I’ve got to take a chance to see it.'”
He and family stayed overnight at Madras to observe the eclipse.
“It was just like a miracle,” he said. “The clouds rolled away. It was just beautiful.”
It was an emotional high that, he said, imbued his children with a love for astronomy.
He has also traveled long distances to observe total eclipses. One in 1991 took him to Hawaii on an organized trip.
“They provided lectures, that sort of thing,” he said. There were famous astronomers, “all ready to go, but nothing showed.”
It was cloudy that day, Dowling said, but he still had a good time.
He doesn’t get out with his telescope too often anymore, he said.
“I’ve gotten old. By the time it gets dark, it’s time to go to bed.”
Still, he tries to keep up with what’s going on in astronomy, he said. “When you think of astronomy, it’s huge out there. The universe out there is immense and growing larger.”
He spent 43 years in medicine. Like small towns, “it’s the people” that kept him in it for so long.
“You’ve got to go to school and learn to do something,” he said. “I said maybe I’ll try medicine.”
One of his high school math teachers asked him about his decision. After all, he enjoyed math and sciences. The teacher had thought he might be an engineer and told him, “so you decided to go with people instead of things.”