DUANE
Duane's take
Here's what the official marker has to say, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now settle in, because this one's got the makings of a real Texas story — a young man, a railroad, and a hospital that's still standing today. Pull up a chair at the campfire.
Let's talk about Raleigh R. White, Jr. Born December 10, 1871, in Tippah County, Mississippi, Raleigh was the son of the Reverend Raleigh White, Sr., and Anna Davidson White.
Now his father was a man of two callings — he'd trained as a physician, but the Lord apparently had other plans, because he became a Baptist minister instead. In 1882, the Reverend Mr. White packed up the family and moved them to Texas, where he went on to serve a number of Texas churches.
Young Raleigh, though — he remembered that his father had once been a physician, and somewhere in that boy, medicine took hold. He attended Baylor University, then went on to Tulane University Department of Medicine, graduating in 1893 at the age of twenty-one. Twenty-one years old, with a medical degree in hand.
Texas didn't know what was comin'. He practiced medicine in Cameron for about eighteen months, and then in 1895, a man named Dr. Arthur C.
Scott came calling — hired White to serve as house physician at the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway Hospital in Temple. Now that is the kind of hire that changes a city's history. Doctors Scott and White formed a medical practice partnership, and by 1897 they were named joint Chief Surgeons of the Santa Fe Railway.
Joint chiefs. Two men, one railroad, and an ambition that wasn't done growin'. Their practice flourished — and that word flourished is doing some real work here — because in 1904, Scott and White established their own hospital.
They called it the Temple Sanitarium. You might know it today as Scott and White Hospital. Dr.
White was by all accounts a gifted business partner and a renowned surgeon. He developed a treatment for cancer. He actively promoted ethical and humane treatment of patients.
He gave himself to medical associations, contributed greatly to medicine in Texas, and by every measure, the man was building something that would outlast him. And that's the quiet tragedy sitting at the end of this story. Raleigh R.
White, Jr., died in 1917, at the age of forty-five. The marker calls it his early death, and that phrase lands hard when you consider what he'd already built by then. A hospital that bears his name.
A legacy in Texas medicine that the marker says he contributed to greatly. All of it — from Tippah County, Mississippi, to the heart of Temple, Texas — in forty-five years. Some folks get a lifetime and leave nothing.
Raleigh White got forty-five years and left a hospital.
What the marker says
Born December 10, 1871, in Tippah County, Mississippi, Raleigh R. White, Jr., was the son of the Rev. Raleigh White, Sr., and Anna Davidson White. The Rev. Mr. White had trained as a physician, but became a Baptist minister who served a number of Texas churches after moving his family to Texas in 1882. Raleigh White, Jr., attended Baylor University and graduated from Tulane University Department of Medicine in 1893 at the age of 21. White practiced medicine in Cameron for about eighteen months before moving to Temple in 1895 when Dr. Arthur C. Scott hired him to serve as house physician at the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway Hospital. Doctors Scott and White formed a medical practice partnership, and were named joint Chief Surgeons of the Santa Fe Railway in 1897. Their practice flourished, and in 1904 they established their own hospital named the Temple Sanitarium, now Scott & White Hospital. Dr. White, a gifted business partner and renowned surgeon, developed a treatment for cancer an actively promoted ethical and humane treatment of patients. Active in a number of medical associations, White contributed greatly to medicine in Texas until his early death in 1917 at age 45. (1997)