Dr. Jim Shaw: Lackey Clinic’s Foundation of Faith
After years as a successful pulmonologist with the Riverside Health System and Medical Group, Dr. Jim Shaw and his wife Cooka changed course in life in response to a call to faith. In 1995, they opened Lackey Clinic in the Sunday school classroom of a local church. Lackey is a small hamlet just outside Yorktown, Virginia, where some residents live at 200 percent below the federal poverty line and often have limited access to health insurance. After some time, a member of the church’s choir stopped by for a blood pressure check. That opened the door for other members of the community to trust Shaw, and a legacy was born.
From its humble beginnings, Lackey Clinic expanded to the Charles Brown Community Center, just a mile from the church. Volunteers and patients continued to fill its pop-up facility, and the clinic outgrew its home once again.
Shaw and his volunteers broke ground on their own building in 2003, this time a 3,000-square-foot facility with four exam rooms, a small pharmacy and a waiting area. The group operated out of this facility for over seven years, expanding when needed. After a capital campaign in 2012, the clinic added 6,000 square feet, creating a 10,000-square-foot space to house 10 medical exam rooms and five dental operatories.
Carol Sale, executive director of Lackey Clinic, says, “The clinic has grown exponentially under Dr. Shaw’s guidance and care over the last 20 years. He and his wife Cooka founded the clinic together and have both been volunteering their time ever since. Dr. Shaw dedicated his life to this clinic and the work that was being done for the community.”
Today, Lackey Clinic serves around 1,600 patients each year, with over 12,500 patient visits in that same time. It employs a part-time medical director, one full-time and two part-time nurse practitioners and 40 physician specialists who rotate schedules to care for patients. The clinic offers 14 subspecialty clinics, while the medical director and nurse practitioners provide acute primary care on an ongoing basis to patients.
Shaw died at the age of 70 on July 29, 2015, but his vision has dynamically changed the health and wellness of an entire community.
Dr. Howard Jones: IVF Pioneer Leaves a Fertile Legacy
From his earliest days working at Johns Hopkins Hospital, to his fame as the “father of in vitro fertilization” in the United States, Dr. Howard Jones Jr., surgeon, inspired his colleagues and rose to the challenge of advancing fertility options for women and families. He and his equally illustrious wife, Dr. Georgeanna Jones, endocrinologist, took mandatory retirement at age 65 from Johns Hopkins and transferred to Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) to head up the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Working in tandem, the pair revolutionized fertility options for women, perfecting the first successful IVF treatments and birth in the U.S. in 1981.
Beyond his successes in OB-GYN, Jones was admired and respected. Nancy Garcia, his friend and administrative assistant of 36 years, says Jones was a caring person who treated everyone with respect. She describes working with Jones during the first days of IVF treatment, “We went through a lot of controversy in the beginning because it was a new procedure. He’s most well known for IVF, but he and Georgeanna helped women with all kinds of infertility problems. They were quite a team.”
An inspirational leader in his field, Jones made a lasting impression on his colleagues. Dr. Richard Horman, M.D., president and provost of EVMS and dean of the School of Medicine, credits Drs. Howard and Georgeanna Jones with bringing international attention to the school. Horman says, “There are few people who inspire you when you first meet them. Dr. Jones was one of those individuals. He exuded an enthusiasm and a curiosity, and he was intellectually keen and extraordinarily bright, yet humble and human and approachable. He was the consummate scholar, academician and physician and a role model for all of us to emulate.”
Dr. Alfred Abuhamad, chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Mason C. Andrews chair in Obstetrics and Gynecology, considers Jones a mentor. He says, “He and Dr. Georgeanna revolutionized how we care for women with infertility problems. Everywhere you look around the world you can see Howard and Georgeanna Jones in the fellows they trained,
in the discoveries they made and in the countless patients
they impacted.”
Garcia says Jones was alert and working until his death on July 31, 2015 at the age of 104. He had just finished a book about his and Georgeanna’s days as young doctors that will be edited posthumously and released sometime next year.
