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______________________________________________________________February 06, 2008Hughston Brand Lives OnBY RICHARD HYATT --Ledger-Enquirer ------ Jack Hughston is gone, but his name certainly isn't. We know the orthopedic clinic in Columbus that has carried his name since 1949. We know the hospital on the back side of that campus that also bears his name. Now it appears a hospital on the Phenix City side of the Chattahoochee will be named for the dapper doc with the bow tie and floppy hat. Six orthopedic surgeons from the Hughston Clinic are buying Summit Hospital and the name on the brick façade will soon be changed to Jack Hughston Memorial. Dr. Jack has been on my mind. A new knee was installed on my wife's left leg Tuesday morning at the hospital now called Summit. (That was the knee marked yes, not the one with the no on it.) John Waldrop, who earned his spurs under Hughston, did the deed. He isn't one of the six who owns Summit, but he now replaces joints in Phenix City. Like so many others, we trust these physicians' work because of the Hughston brand. It is built on the talent and the legend of Dr. Jack, a pioneer in sports medicine who started his career as a doctor for polio kids, back when that disease was every parent's fear. I first met him on the practice field at Auburn University. The good doctor was a close friend of Coach Shug Jordan and served as team physician at a time when such jobs were scarce. This was an era when sportswriters wrote about knee injuries as simply knee injuries. No one knew you could tear an ACL. We didn't even know a person had an ACL. When I planned to write about Hughston's lung cancer, he begged me not to. But on the Sunday morning the article appeared, he called me early to thank me for handling it with care. Anyone who knew Hughston knew the devastation he felt when he and his colleagues were replaced by Auburn. The role of Jim Andrews in this decision added to the disappointment. That's why I was interested in Chuck Williams' story on Andrews. Columbus knows the super surgeon. He studied under Hughston and watched his star rise at the local clinic. He was a dynamo. Nothing he did was under the radar. He was part owner of the Red Stixx and most nights was in his box behind third base. When he divorced, the settlement was one of the largest in Muscogee County history. Andrews was family, and when he left for Birmingham, Ala., Hughston was hurt -- and the wounds never completely healed. When Hughston died at the age of 87, I asked his colleagues whether Andrews would be at the funeral. They said no, but said he had called to speak to Mrs. Hughston. In the weekend article, Andrews recalled a letter from Hughston that was scrawled on a sheet from a legal pad. Too bad the words weren't delivered in person, for they probably had much to say. Jack Hughston was the mentor and Jim Andrews the protégé. Hughston was the father and Andrews the son. A reunion between them would have meant more than a name on the side of a building. |