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Doc Lampley, an original Pardee physician, dies at age 96

Dr. William A. Lampley speaks at Pardee Hospital's 60th anniversary celebration in November 2013.

William A. “Doc” Lampley, a surgeon whose life pursuits included sports car driving, woodworking, hunting and fishing, scuba diving and flying, died early Thursday at the Elizabeth House a few days after suffering a stroke. He was 96.


Lampley was thought to have been the last surviving physician who was on staff at Patton Memorial Hospital when Pardee Hospital opened in 1953 with 70 beds. The new hospital was built when the medical community, the county Board of Commissioners and business leaders, including Lampley’s father pushed for a $250,000 bond issue and private donations.

“I remember how pleased he was when he, along with Drs. Fortescue and Trotter, attorney Ben Prince and perhaps others got a pledge of $100,000 from Ivor Pardee in exchange for naming rights,” Lampley said at Pardee’s 60th anniversary celebration in 2013. “He chose ‘Margaret R. Pardee Memorial Hospital’ to honor his aunt who had raised him.”
From the time he was training as a surgeon in medical school, Lampley impressed peers with his good hands.

“Bill can tie a knot in a matchbox,” classmates would say.
“My first major surgery was a football player from Hendersonville High School that had a knee injury,” Lampley said in an interview with the Hendersonville Lightning in 2013. “We discharged him from the hospital at Patton and admitted him at Pardee.”
Seven months later Doc Lampley got a big multiple trauma case.
“The first real break I had was Fourth of July in ‘54,” he said. “I stopped by the emergency room on the way home and they had a woman who had been cut. I told ‘em get it ready, and I’d be back. About the time I was finishing up, ambulances started coming in and they hauled eight people into the emergency room from an automobile accident. The car hit a telephone pole in front of Balfour Baptist Church. Eight of them were critical. I hollered for help and three other doctors came in to help. I had seven of them admitted. From that day it was 15 years before I saw a day I didn’t have patients in the hospital.”

Lampley was also one of the leaders at Pardee who worked to upgrade emergency transportation.
“Funeral home employees took an ambulance out and loaded the body on a stretcher and came flying in at breakneck speed,” he said. “They killed more people than they saved.”
As chairman of the hospital’s emergency committee, he helped guide the transition to a more professional model. "Working with the county, we went from a meat wagon service to the paid trained qualified service that we have now," he said.

For most of his career, Lampley stayed busy performing surgeries in Pardee’s ER while also maintaining a private practice in general surgery. He recalled one time when his fellow physicians began complaining about how many surgeries they were called on to perform in the ER.

“I went back to the books and did a survey of the year, and I think something like 11,000 patients had been seen in the emergency room in a year,” he said. “Of that Maury Cree and I saw close to 75 percent of ‘em. I saw just under half of ‘em, and the rest of the men averaged three calls per day that they were on call. One day a month they were seeing three patients.”
Weary not so much of the work but of the rules, the insurance hassle and bureaucracy, he retired in 1990 at age 70.
“I worked for 37 years and I averaged about a thousand new charts a year,” he said.

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Born Sept. 20, 1920, in Greenville, S.C., William Askew Lampley was the second son of James Hoyt and Mildred Askew Lampley. He came to Hendersonville with his family when his father accepted a job with the Hendersonville Water Department.
A 1937 graduate of Hendersonville High School, Lampley graduated with a B.S. degree from Furman University in biology in 1941. He earned his medical degree from the University of Maryland in 1944 before completing residencies in Miami, Baltimore, Stapleton, N.Y., and Philadelphia. He served in the U.S. Army Reserves from 1941 to 1944 and in the U.S. Navy, as a lieutenant j.g., at Naval hospitals and other installations in Florida, California and Shanghai, China. As a medical officer with the U.S. Public Health Service from 1949 to 1953 Lampley served as a surgeon at three public hospitals and at the U.S. Federal Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, before his discharge with the rank equivalent to Navy commander.

He is survived by his wife, Mary Ann McGettrick Lampley, whom he married on Dec. 30, 1947; children William A. Lampley Jr. (Sharon), Margie Lampley Capell and John William Lampley (Claudia); and grandchildren Ivy Capell Roush, Lauren Lampley Stanfield, John Mark and Peter Lampley; and a great-grandchild, Charles Abraham Stanfield. All his children and grandchildren are graduates of Hendersonville High School except for Bill Lampley Jr., who received his degree from the North Carolina School of the Arts.

 

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Retirement from his medical practice did not slow down the wiry practitioner of a thousand interests and hobbies. He pursued his outside interests with as much passion as ever.
An avid football fan, he was a devoted fan of HHS, where he graduated in the first class to go from first grade to graduation in the Stillwell-designed school building, and a passionate booster of the Furman Palladins.
He was a cofounder and the first president of the Hendersonville High School Alumni Association, a member of the Furman University Alumni Advisory Board, founding member and first president of the Henderson County Cancer Society, past president of the Henderson County Medical Society, a member of the Hendersonville Kiwanis Club for more than 50 years, past president and Legion of Honor Award recipient; and a Henderson County Rescue Squad Advisory Board member for more than 20 years.

At home he found time to read, write a remembrance of his life and watch the birds that visited his many feeders. More than once, he went outside to pick up a hapless bird that had knocked itself out flying into his picture window. Doc would gently scoop up the tiny creature and cup it in his hands until it came to and flew off.

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The family will host a drop-in reception and public celebration of Dr. Lampley’s at The Cedars from 4 to 6 p.m. Tuesday. Donations in remembrance of Dr. Lampley may be made to the William A. Lampley Scholarship Fund through the Community Foundation of Henderson County.