Burkhart on 50 years and counting as doctor
From the humblest of beginnings in the hills and coal fields of Appalachia, Stephen Burkhart and his siblings were encouraged by their mother to leave their home in Harlan County, Ky., for greener pastures. Somewhere along the way, the persuasion led Burkhart to medicine.
“That’s hard to know,” Dr. Burkhart, 77, said of what pushed him into the medical field. “I guess I decided when I was a young boy somewhere along the way.”
While he doesn’t recall any moment of revelation or guiding light that led him to become a doctor, more than 50 years after starting his practice, Burkhart knows that he made the right decision.
“I’m happy to have been a part of so many families,” he said. “I loved making house calls.”
That’s right. House calls.
“I made a tremendous amount of house calls,” Burkhart added. “I used to know who everybody was and where they lived.”
Burkhart recalls the visits to patients’ homes as one of his favorite parts of medicine since opening an office in Salem Hospital in November 1958. It’s not something he nor many other doctors undertake anymore, as advancements in the medical field have made them almost obsolete.
“They were inefficient,” he said. “It just took so much time to travel and offices are better equipped than what you could take with you.”
After only a few minutes with the family practitioner, his passion for health care and the community he has served his entire career becomes obvious. Even at the dawn of a reception Friday to honor his 50-plus years in medicine, he has no plans of giving up his practice.
“I’ve been blessed with good health,” he said. “As long as I’m healthy and able to practice, I’ll continue.”
Friday’s reception at Occasions in Marion is hosted by the Salem practice that carries the doctor’s name, Burkhart Rural Health Clinic, and Crittenden Health Systems, with which he has maintained an exclusive relationship since opening his own downtown Salem office in 1962. Though he’d prefer to overlook the 50-year recognition and accolades, Burkhart is sure to enjoy the visits from those who may have taken their first breath while still in his hands.
“People come up to me and ask, ‘Do you remember me? Well, you delivered me’,” Burkhart said, adding that the countless babies he delivered until he got out of obstetrics in his late 50s don’t all ring a bell.
“I still enjoy that, though.”

Leaving home for a new one
After high school, Burkhart left his mountain home in southeastern Kentucky for Berea College, leaving behind the difficult life endured by his father, a coal miner.
“He would get up at 4 and not get home until dark,” Burkhart recalled. “Then, he’d work in the garden.”
He knew that was a life he didn’t want.
Burkhart admits his life is a bit of an American dream – a poor kid growing up in the midst of The Great Depression in impoverished hills of Appalachia, leaving home after high school to become a doctor. But it wouldn’t have happened without his mother’s appreciation of an education, he adds.
After graduating from Berea, Burkhart went on to medical school at the University of Louisville. He took advantage of a rural scholarship that would later punch his ticket for Salem.
“I had very little money,” he said.
Upon leaving college, Burkhart repayed his military deferment to Uncle Sam with a stint in the U.S. Air Force. Once out of uniform, he arrived in western Kentucky, which fulfilled his scholarship obligation of practicing in a rural area.
He’s never looked back.
“The people in this area, these are the people I lived with my entire life,” he said. indicating that rural residents in western Kentucky are little different than those on the other side of the commonwealth.
After moving his Salem practice in 1965 to its current location, Burkhart’s career took off, impacting greatly the state of health care in the area.
In 1967, he organized a corporation and built Salem Nursing Home, which he managed until selling to CHS in 1988. In the early 1970s, Burkhart worked with others to build a new home for Crittenden Hospital, which had been in the two-story, former residence across from Fohs Hall.
“I hate to say it, but it was kind of discouraging,” he said of the 10 years or so of working in the outdated building as part of his association with Crittenden Hospital.
Himself a resident of Livingston County until 1999, he says he was proud when Crittenden County voters in the early 1970s elected to build a new hospital, taking on the financial risk but taking a serious step toward better health care.
In 1981, he and Dr. Gregory Maddux organized Family Practice Clinic, adding Dr. Gary James a year later. Dr. Scott Graham later joined the team. Dr. Burkhart continued that relationship until 1996 when he licensed his office in Salem as a rural health clinic. It was subsequently sold to CHS, and he continues to work 20 hours or so a week as a physician.
Burkhart also formed a partnership with Drs. James and Maddux in 1984 to buy the nursing home in Marion. Thirteen years later, that, too, sold to CHS.
Also during his involvement with the county’s hospital and rural health care, an ambulance service was established, with the hospital agreeing to run the emergency service at a loss in order to provide improved life-saving measures away from the operating rooms and hallways of the hospital.
To Burkhart, the state of health care both locally and in general are almost unrecognizable from the time he arrived here in 1958.
“So much in medicine has changed,” Burkhart reflects. “Very little I learned in medical school I use now.”
The last half-century has been an exciting time in medicine, he said, perhaps the most important 50 years in history.
“I’m glad to have been a part of it,” he adds. “I’ve had a good life.”

Backroads fest greets quilters (Schedule - PDF version)
Marion and rural Amish merchants, as well as several community organizations, are geared up for this weekend's Amish Tour and Backroads Festival in Crittenden County, held each spring in conjunction with the annual American Quilter's Society Quilt Show and Contest in Paducah.
Tens of thousands of quilting enthusiasts converge on western Kentucky during the quilt show, with many filling their schedules with tours of the area. The Backroads Festival and self-guided tours of the Amish community, which began Wednesday, were created as an attraction for many of those visitors, as well as a way for local residents to celebrate the rural heritage of Crittenden County.
Marion Welcome Center will be open the remainder of the week to provide information and maps for this weekend's events and tours, all of which are free. The welcome center, located at Marion Commons on South Main Street, will be open from 9 a.m., to 4 p.m., each day. Free maps for self-guided tours of the Amish community and information on all local events during the festival will be available.
Two-day quilt shows in Marion will include the Welcome Center Quilt Show on Friday and Saturday as well at the Native American Quilt Show at Mantle Rock Native Education and Cultural Center. Locally-made quilts will also be on display at local merchants and the county's history museum, which will offer an extensive history on quilting in Kentucky.
One-day shows will feature quilts Friday at the Marion Woman's Club Quilt Show and Bake Sale and Saturday at the Crittenden County Extension Homemaker Association-sponsored Backroads Quilt Show at Marion City Hall.
Concessions to benefit Crittenden County Relay for Life and the Republican Party of Crittenden County will also be available throughout town, as well as numerous registrations for prize drawings.
Links and more information on many of the sites and activities featured during the Backroads Festival can be found at the Marion Tourism Commission's Web site at www.marionkentucky.us. Local and visitor information can also be found on the radio at 1500 AM WMJL. Information on the Paducah quilt show can be found online at www.americanquilter.com.

Bryant ‘cautious’ about city’s coming year
Some late tinkering to the City of Marion's current budget has council members concerned about next year amid a ongoing national recession.
On Monday, council members approved a transfer of almost $600,000 in investments to plug holes in the spending plan created, in part, by damages and cleanup costs related to January's ice storm. The money will also pay for two new trucks for the city's utilities and maintenance departments and a $350,000 reimbursement to Crittenden Fiscal Court for grant money the city received.
The move will leave City Administrator Mark Bryant without the $586,325 in certificates of deposit okayed for the transfer as he continues crunching numbers for next year's budget. While spending those investments will reduce the city's coffers, council members backed Bryant's suggestion to create a new spending plan that leaves tax and water rates untouched.
"The next fiscal year is one of concern, caution," he told council members Monday.
Most of that concern comes from anticipated increases in health insurance premiums for the city's 22 full-time employees and contributions to the state retirement system. While Bryant will be pleased with any insurance increase under 10 percent, retirement contributions are already sure to be up 20 percent.
Meantime, on the revenue side, the city administrator said income is steady from the city's payroll tax and levy on insurance premiums.
"They're holding their own" he said.
However, receipts from the first quarter of 2009 are not in, and income from occupational taxes could be down as unemployment in the county has crept above 10 percent for the first time in 12 years.
Because interest rates on CDs and other investments are low at a time when automobile prices have plummeted, the council opted to approve $38,000 in Monday's transfer for the purchase of two new trucks for utility and maintenance crews. Hedging his bets for the coming year, Councilman Darrin Tabor said it seems to be the right time for such an expense.
"There's not much return on CDs right now, and if we buy new, we're going to get a truck as cheap as we're going to get one," he said.
Mayor Mickey Alexander is expected to present the six-person council with a draft 2010 budget next week. The council will then have less than a month to make adjustments and give final approval to the spending plan by the end of May, one month prior to its taking effect July 1. A budget work session is tentatively planned for the first full week of May, with first reading of the budget expected at the council's regular meeting on May 18. A second and final reading would come the final week of May.
The city's current budget is $2.7 million. Bryant expects the 2010 budget to be about the same.
Also on Monday, Utilities Director Brian Thomas said months of cleanup remain from the ice storm, though curbside pick-up of debris at homes and business is near completion.
"There is still a massive amount of work left," he said, adding that crews on Monday spent all day at the city's water plant and the park at Lake George removing limbs and other storm debris. "We're about as busy now as I've ever seen anybody, any where, any time."
Thomas said residents who still have yet to have their debris removed by city crews should be patient, adding that the work is not complete. However, to ensure the work has not been overlooked, he asked that those residents call Marion City Hall to notify of their location.
Storm cleanup and recent rains have hampered other ongoing jobs, too, Thomas said. Installation of equipment to add residents in the Hart-Rudd subdivision to the city's sewer system is one of those casualties, he added.