Dr. John Roth Jr. retires from Morris

MORRIS – Growing up, Dr. John Roth Jr. knew he would be a doctor like his father. He knew because his grandmother told him so.

“She told me, ‘You are going to be a doctor,’ and she meant it,” Roth said. “It was expected of me.”

At just 24 years old, Roth graduated medical school in three years instead of the typical four. He knew being a doctor was what he wanted to do, but he didn’t have any goals beyond that.

He went to Denver General Hospital and interned for a year when he met a young nurse named Judie, who later become his wife.

“I was working in a 22-bed ward and he would come in to take care of a patient. He washed her feet and treated her like the queen of England,” Judie Roth said. “He treated her so kind, I fell in love with him that day.”

After his year as an intern, Roth was drafted to Vietnam.

After Vietnam, he returned to Denver to St. Joseph Hospital for his three-year residency, before returning to Morris to practice medicine.

“I didn’t know what type of doctor I wanted to be. My dad was a general practitioner,” he said. “I thought when I came back from Vietnam I’d be a surgeon, but my dad said we didn’t need a surgeon in Morris. If there was a crisis we needed an OB (obstetrics), so I went into OB because that is what Morris needed.”

He said obstetrics still allowed him to perform surgery, but it also gave the Morris Hospital & Healthcare Centers, then known as Morris Hospital, a doctor to call when an expectant mother was in crisis.

Former Morris resident Reggie Bockman, now of Vicksburg, Mississippi, was grateful Roth chose obstetrics when, at 16 years old, she went into labor with her oldest son Dustin, who will turn 29 this June.

“Everything seemed perfectly normal up to about seven months,” she said. “Then the ultrasounds started to show there was a problem.”

Her son was born with gastroschisis, a birth defect in which an infant’s intestines are outside of the body because of a hole in the abdominal wall. “Dr. Roth was as calm as could be. He had to deliver before he could scrub up,” she said. “He made everything sound so simple. I honestly believe if it was someone else the outcome would have been far worse.”

She didn’t realize at the time how much he helped her get through that rough time, she said. Her son has grown to play football in school and went on to become an alligator hunter featured on television.

Delivering an alligator hunter is a first for him, Roth said, though there aren’t many firsts when you have delivered 8,000 babies in a 43-year career.

He describes labor and delivery as “hours of boredom followed by utter sheer panic,” but said he enjoyed it all, even though it meant missing countless holidays and events with family as he brought a new baby into the world.

Vickie Willis of Morris went to see Roth’s father, Dr. John Roth Sr., when she was pregnant with her first child before she moved away to Denver.

When she returned to the area, she made an appointment to see Dr. Roth Jr., worried something was wrong after she gained a significant amount of weight. It was Roth who told her she was five months pregnant. She had no other symptoms and had no idea that was the case.

Roth went on to deliver her second daughter Tammi, and her third daughter Jamie.

“He has such a great bedside manner you don’t even realize he’s examining you,” she said.

When it was her daughter Tammi Casey of Seneca’s turn to see a doctor, her mother took her to see Roth. He went on to deliver all three of Casey’s children as well.

“He has such a caring bedside manner. I’m sad he’s not going to be there,” Casey said.

Delivering babies wasn’t all Roth did for the family. He found cervical cancer when examining Willis and set her up with a doctor at Loyola for treatment.

“He told me he didn’t want to see me again for five years,” Willis said. “After my doctor at Loyola transferred, I asked if I could come back and he said yes. I was so happy. I’ve always worried about who I will go see if he retires.”

Roth said at 74 he believes it’s time to retire, and he knows he’s leaving the field in good hands. Unlike when he returned to Morris as the first and only doctor practicing obstetrics, many doctors are now available.

“I’m so happy I’m leaving it in their hands,” Roth said about the doctors in the area.

The hospital will host a retirement party next month for Roth.

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IF YOU GO

What: Retirement reception for Dr. John Roth Jr.

When: 2 to 6 p.m. on April 16

Where: Morris Hospital & Healthcare Centers main campus, 150 W. High St. in Morris in the Whitman assembly room.