by Cori Hilsgen
news@thenewsleaders.com
Dr. Thomas Newton was chosen to be the grand marshal of the July 4 parade organized by the St. Joseph Lions Club.
Lions member Joanne Bechtold said he was selected because he spent so many years in the area serving others. Since Newton is also planning to retire from CentraCare Health on July 2, many members felt it was an appropriate time to honor him.
“I am very honored and surprised by my selection, and I am grateful the community feels my service here has been appreciated enough to be chosen,” Newton said.
Newton came to the St. Joseph area in 1978 with his wife, Elaine.
“Immediately upon coming here, Elaine and I just knew, even before the interview, we knew,” Newton said. “We thought what a beautiful area. This is where we are going to practice.”
He worked with a Rural Health Initiative Program, with a volunteer community board of directors, and spent half of his time in St. Joseph and the other half in Cold Spring. When the program was discontinued, Newton remained in St. Joseph as a full-time, solo practitioner for about 15 years.
In 1995, CentraCare acquired his practice and he has remained with them as a family medicine doctor. Other physicians, such as Dr. Julia Craig-Muller, joined him at the St. Joseph CentraCare Clinic.
Newton has been practicing medicine for 38 years. He said his practice in the area has consisted of a general family practice, with the exception of obstetrics, including adult and pediatric medicine, minor office surgical procedures, nursing-home rounds and even house calls.
Newton made rounds on his hospitalized patients every day he was not on vacation for 36 years, until two years ago when Hospitalists took over the care of all family-practice hospital patients.
He said has seen many changes throughout the years. When he first began to practice, there were no computerized tomography scans or magnetic-resonance imaging tests, and he said doctors had to examine the patient by other means to make a diagnosis.
There also weren’t any cellular phones, and so Newton knew the location of every pay phone between St. Joseph and the St. Cloud Hospital because he would frequently get paged two or three times while traveling to or from the hospital.
“The first few years of my practice there were no full-time emergency-room physicians, and all the doctors on the hospital staff had to take calls for emergency-room coverage,” Newton said.
There also were no cardiologists, neonatologists, neurologists or many other specialists. St. Cloud is now recognized for having premier programs in many of those specialties.
Newton said living in the same area as his patients and knowing them outside of the office was helpful for providing medical care because it helped to know what else might be going on in patients’ lives that contributed to their illnesses.
As a physician, he said it was hard when he had to tell patients he had known for many years that they had terminal illnesses.
When practicing solo, if he became ill, the office would be closed, and his staff sent patients to other family doctors in the area for emergencies. When he took his vacations, he hired a locum tenens physician (one who fills in temporarily) to cover the practice while he was gone.
Newton does not appreciate all of the changes in his profession.
“The amount of control insurance companies and government has over medical care is appalling and interferes with the good practice of medicine,” he said. “The bureaucratic burdens interfere with a personal relationship with your patients. At times I feel more like a data entry clerk than a healer.”
Newton said when he visited doctors’ offices when he was younger, he thought he would never want to be a doctor and be around sick people all the time.
However, when he was in seventh grade while traveling on a long road trip to Winnipeg, Canada, he read a book written by Dr. Tom Dooley, a medical missionary in Vietnam, and immediately knew then he was going to become a doctor.
Newton said he and his brother were both adopted by wonderful parents. His father and grandfather were both machinists, and he was the first in his family to become a doctor.
About 10 years ago, when wanting to learn more about his family medical history, he discovered he had a biological sister he hadn’t known about. He found it interesting she became a registered nurse and they have similar interests.
“It’s been absolutely fantastic getting to know my sister,” Newton said.
Newton grew up in the St. Paul area and attended Cretin High School. After high school, he attended the College of St. Thomas (now the University of St. Thomas) and later received his medical degree from Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine in 1974. He also received a Fellowship degree from the American Academy of Family Physicians in 1981.
After completing medical school, Newton did a family practice residency in Saginaw, Mich., for three years. During that time he met and married his wife.
Before coming to St. Joseph, he was the medical director of a 14-county Migrant Health Program in Michigan.
“I’ve always enjoyed being involved in medical education and was chairman of the St. Cloud Hospital Graduate Medical Education Committee from 1995 until it dissolved about two years ago,” Newton said. “I’ve served as a mentor and preceptor for medical residents, medical students and nurse practitioner students, as well as pre-med students over the years.”
He has been a member of the diocesan Natural Family Planning advisory board and served as a volunteer physician for Birthright for many years before it disbanded.
Newton was a member of the St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce and is a past recipient of the “Kelly Award,” joined the Knights of Columbus shortly after it formed, and has volunteered at July 4 celebrations in various booths, including bingo, the Mexican stand, pull tabs and the refreshment stand.
Elaine, who earned a certificate of ministry from the College of St. Benedict and a master’s degree in pastoral ministry from the St. John’s University graduate school of theology, is retired after working in Hospice Chaplaincy.
Newton, who will turn 67 on July 2, and Elaine, 70, have three children.
“All of our three children – Andrew, Joseph and Teresa – were born here and now all are married” he said. “We have nine grandchildren who we are looking forward to visiting a lot more after my retirement.”
Following retirement, the Newtons plan to remain in St. Joseph because they consider it home.
“Elaine and I are very thankful we were allowed the opportunity to provide 17 years of Catholic education for all of our children in the area,” he said.
All of their children went into the medical field. Andy is a nuclear-medicine technologist at Edwards Heart Hospital in Naperville, Ill. Joe has a master’s degree in psychology and does psychology consulting work while he is a full-time stay-at-home father in Madison, Wis. Teresa is a registered nurse at the newborn intensive-care unit at the Children’s Hospital in St. Paul.
In between visiting his grandchildren, Newton is looking forward to having time for fishing, gardening, traveling, cooking and reading. He also looks forward to enjoying simple pleasures such as reading the newspaper in the morning, with a cup of coffee, while watching the sunrise.
Drs. Sean and Katrina Wherry, a husband and wife team, will join the St. Joseph clinic as family medicine physicians when Newton retires.
The couple and their three children are moving to the area after working at a military base clinic in Alaska since 2013.
A clinic open house recognizing Newton’s retirement and welcoming Drs. Katrina and Sean Wherry will be held from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 26, at the CentraCare Clinic in St. Joseph.
The annual parade is scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday, July 4. According to Bechtold, there are almost 100 floats this year.
Counting down the days, Dr. Thomas Newton points to the number of days he has left to work before he retires on July 2. He was chosen as the grand marshal for this year’s Fourth of July parade organized by the St. Joseph Lions Club.
Dr. Thomas Newton holds a fly fishing rod that was given to him by one of his patients. He said he is grateful for the many tokens of appreciation he has received throughout his years of practicing medicine in the area.
The bookcases in Dr. Thomas Newton’s office are filled with reference books, photos of loved ones and tokens of appreciation that he received from patients during his years of practicing medicine. Newton plans to retire July 2.
After practicing medicine for 38 years, Dr. Thomas Newton will retire from CentraCare Health Clinic on July 2. An open house will be held at the St. Joseph clinic on Tuesday, July 26, celebrating his retirement and welcoming Drs. Katrina and Sean Wherry, a wife-and-husband team who are moving from Alaska to join the St. Joseph clinic as family medicine physicians when Newton retires.
