Introduction

“Do you see...?” Fred asked calmly as the headlights suddenly appeared. I had only enough time to react and steer left slightly as they quickly came straight at us. It was about 2 a.m. December 12, 1971.

The night before, we left Denver driving to Omaha, Nebraska seeking advice on partnering and buying a practice. Our non-stop conversation had been full of hope.

Twenty minutes before the headlights appeared, we stopped at a truck stop on I-80 just outside Lincoln to refuel and refresh. I had been driving since we left Denver and Fred offered to take over, but the stop recharged me and I took the wheel again...

In the turmoil of the ‘60s, Frederick Durr and I were fellow travelers on the road through the Tuskegee Institute School of Veterinary Medicine to careers as doctors of veterinary medicine, he and I. He, with 2 years more travel on the path, and I, with 2 years more wear of the tread. Frederick was bright and articulate, his mind keenly observant, analytical, and fair. He was a future star. Yet what set him apart were his soft spokenness, his compassion, his humility. I remember his ever-willingness to lend a hand or an ear, or to give a word of encouragement to a fellow traveler in need.

Fred Durr finished Tuskegee’s SVM in 1968, earning highest honors. In the halcyon days of the doctor-as-god egotist, he was to be Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird.

With DVM in hand, he and his wife moved back to their home state New Jersey where he was eagerly welcomed into a growing, thriving practice. A few months later, his wife gave birth to their beautiful daughter.

I earned my degree from Tuskegee in 1970, finishing in the top 15 of my class of 23. I was a newly minted Doctor, certain to set my professional world on fire. My wife, my two-year-old son, and I moved back to our home state Louisiana where I was anxiously received into a depressed, dying practice. One month later, the solo-practice owner handed me the keys and bade me well as he quietly and quickly vanished into retirement on his farm in northern Mississippi. In subsequent months, my wife and I realized that this was not the practice upon which we hoped to build our future, nor was this any longer the place where we wished to raise our family. I returned the keys - and the practice - to the devastated, suddenly-unretired practice owner and our family left Louisiana for a brighter future in Colorado.

In January 1971, I found employment in a practice in Denver where, after two months, the solo-practice owner handed me the keys and bade me well as he somewhat apologetically retired to his ranch in southern Colorado. He returned ever so frequently to see that I was performing all my duties including, but not limited to: veterinarian, receptionist, assistant, bookkeeper, kennel manager/janitor, and building/grounds maintenance supervisor and contractor.

A few weeks before I began my new employment, I got a phone call from Fred that changed my life, forever. Disenchanted with their family’s quality life, Fred and his wife had applied for jobs in Colorado. He was offered a position in a progressive Denver practice and sought my opinion of the practice and of family life in Colorado. With a feeling of my own renewal, I encouraged him to accept the offer both for the practice’s known high standards and for Denver’s quality of life.

The dream was born when Fred and his family moved to Denver that spring and we first talked about the possibility of buying the practice in which I worked and which I knew its owner wanted to sell. In the weeks before the trip, we talked often together with our wives about the future in our own practice and we dreamed the same dreams of success. When I drove away from the truck stop, we dreamed aloud again…..

Veering left was a reflexive avoidance-reaction and I think we’ll be all right! But in the last instant of consciousness, the headlights veer sharply to my left.

Blinded, I regain consciousness and call out; Fred doesn’t answer. Leaning to reach him in the passenger seat, I fall from the car. Now crawling, calling his name, I hear his painful cry. After finding him, my vision returns. His cries weaken; his skin is pale. I go to the mangled car - torn in half from just behind the right-front fender as if it was paper - to get a heavy coat to cover him. I place the coat over him, but his skin is cool. In time, an ambulance from Lincoln arrives.

We are in separate rooms, but I can still hear his cries – softer, more peaceful. Then, his cries cease.

Early that December morning, Fred Durr died. Taken cruelly from his wife and his daughter, his life and promise ended tragically when someone drove westbound in a drunken stupor into the eastbound lanes of Interstate 80 - a few miles east of Lincoln, Nebraska. On that morning a dream died.

Home in Denver I recovered from my injuries and later returned to practice, unsure of my future, with no dream to guide me. Often the feelings of isolation, emptiness, and survivor’s guilt were overwhelming, yet I carried on because on the morning Fred died I vowed to honor him by emulating him as best I could. I believe that in his final moments Fred vowed to be there with me in troubled times.

Reflecting on the years since passed, I recall the despairing moments when I just wanted to walk away – and Fred was there. I did not - I could not because Frederick Durr left his legacy, and his legacy lives, however brief his life. He was a mentor and model who lived the best of our humanity; he is the inspiration to become better than we are. I hope you will know him through his legacy I share.