Just for my records, I am adding this feature about Dr. Seale. El Dorado News-Times published it Jan. 1, 2011. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published it Jan. 2, in its entirety.
By JOAN HERSHBERGER
News-Times Staff
In a time when house calls waned, one doctor still visited patients at the Big House. And now, after nearly 40 years of doing what few doctors want to do, of showing up faithfully at the Union County Jail with his medical bag in hand, Dr. James Seale is retiring from his post as the Union County prison physician.
“It has saved the county a lot of money for him to come out here and treat the patients. If you talk about taking that many inmates out of here to go to the doctor for treatment, we would have been in a bind. It has been great that he has been willing to come. I have seen times with as high as 20-30 inmates that he has seen in one visit,” said former Union County Sheriff Ken Jones.
“He’s been great to work with. He has been here since I came in 1995. He has done a wonderful job and provided a high level of care for our population out here. He is a great guy. I talked with him last year and he warned me he might retire. He came in a few months back and said he thought he would retire with me. I thought it was kind of funny. He sat down with me and said, ‘when is your last day?’ I told him and he said, ‘Well that’s my last day, too.’ He has been a part of the sheriff’s office family for many years. He is one of the old time doctors. He is a super easy, gentle person,” Jones added.
On Friday, Dr. Seale closed his office and his practice as a medical doctor in the El Dorado community and 39 years as the prison physician. His departure leaves new Sheriff Mike McGough with an issue needing his immediate attention at the beginning of his administration.
“I have looked and talked with new sheriff-elect McGough. He has done some research and talked with some doctors,” Jones said. The end of Seale’s time may make a difference for the county because “In the years the county has contracted with him he has saved us countless hours and a ton of work and money,” Jones said, referring to the fact that the county sheriff’s office did not have to provide an escort each time an inmate needed a physician’s attention.
“We would have been in a bind years ago without him. I have seen as high as 20-30 inmates that he has seen. When we built the jail, we built it with an exam room, just like a doctor’s office, to have everything he needs. He is a great person,” Jones said.
Former El Dorado Mayor Mike Dumas, who served as the county judge in the 1980s, remembered the old jail and the role Seale played in establishing a medical facility when the new jail was built. “He was the doctor when I became the county judge. Sometimes I said, “I think I am going to get in jail so I can see the doctor, he makes house calls. He came to the jail to see our inmates,” Dumas said. “I think about my term beginning in 1981. We had 10 to 12 inmates in the old county jail. It wasn’t too bad on the doctor in those days. But about 1985-86 crack cocaine arrived on the market in South Arkansas. In 1988, we had in excess of 80 inmates. That was when the drugs really came on the scene and the population really blossomed. Dr. Seale came much more frequently – we had them sleeping on the floors,” Dumas recalled.
“We got called before the federal judge because we were below standard. I was really impressed that he (Seale) assumed the increased burden of the inmate population. He was there almost every day to see someone for something,” Dumas said.
At the time, Seale was paid only a nominal fee for his hours at the jail. In conversation at the time with then-Union County Sheriff August Pieroni, Dumas recalled he commented, “I can’t believe that Dr. Seale is our doctor for this amount of money.” “He never questioned our pay. It as kind of embarrassing what we paid him,” Dumas said. “He was very gracious serving his community – serving our community – as the jail physician. He would tell us, his problem was determining whether the inmate had something wrong or he just wanted out of jail. They came complaining about having high blood pressure, high sugar or fever. We would call Seale and he could not find anything wrong . Everyone wanted out of jail. But they could not get out because he made house calls. He got us out of a lot of pickles,” Dumas said.
“He was involved in making sure we had a clinic at the jail. In the old jail we brought them out to the lobby or into the kitchen, into a little storage room about the size of good walk-in closet, where he would see the inmates. We would have to bring them out of jail into unsecured areas. We were so full he could not see them in the jail. When the new jail was mandated, he talked with Sheriff Pieroni about it, making sure we had an adequate place for it so he could doctor our inmates,” Dumas said.
Retiring County Judge Bobby Edmonds recalled that Seale went about his business with few demands on the county.
“He was here when I started in 1997 and he has been at the prisoners health-wise for that period of time. I never heard anything from Dr. Seale. He just went about his job. In the14 years I’ve been here, he has been in my office three or four times to talk about some small problems that have come up. He did all the exams for employees and we had a good relationship. I am really sorry to see Dr. Seale retire,” Edmonds said.
“I wish him the best. I know how he feels – free at last. I can’t say enough good things about him. He minded the business well.”
When the new jail was built in 1991, Seale worked to insure that it had an adequate clinic to use when he went to check on the prisoners. He raised and supplied or got help from local doctors to have what he needed, including putting one of his own examining tables in the clinic, according to his wife Ginger Seale. “He helped put it all together,” she said.
She remembered his summers of work in the old prison.
“It would be so hot in the jail that he would return wiped out from the heat,” she said. “There is a shortage of doctors now, but it was more so when he came to town here. We used to work until 8 at night. In all his years as a physician he has never had a lawsuit filed by a patient at his office, but he has had them the last three or four years from the prisoners. The suits are summarily dismissed as nuisance lawsuits, but nonetheless he had to take care of all the details of notifying the insurance company and arranging an attorney.”
James Seale grew up in Laurel, Miss., with a mother who told him for years that he would be a doctor. After he graduated from high school “he went to Heaven – that’s what he called it,” said Ginger Seale, referring to his undergraduate years at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss. “He did his medical studies at the University of Mississippi in Jackson, Miss.
In 1966 he became a doctor and then interned in south Alabama. He served two years in the military while they paid for part of his schooling. He spent time serving in Korea. After he came out of the Army, he came to El Dorado, which is where the Seales met when she worked at a local pharmacy.
She saw him come in and would talk with him.
“When I turned 20, I thought I was old enough that I could call and ask him out. He said said ‘yes’ to me then and has said ‘yes’ ever since. We married Sept. 22, 1975,” Ginger Seale said. They have three children. Their first grandchild was born two years ago.
Seale’s service to the community included 36 years of providing free school physicals at Parkers Chapel Schools.
“Dr. Seale started doing the physicals in 1969 and did it until about 2005, 36 years. He did this free of charge. He helped our athletic program and families and was real benefit for the school. Every year we called him, he said, “sure I’ll come.’” recalled former Parkers Chapel School Superintendent John Gross.
“When a child needed medical attention, he would take care of them just to help the family out. He was a benefit to our school and community. He would usually come in August before the basketball season and do all the athletes for the entire year. We would get them all together. We would do the boys on one night and the girls on another night. We had nurses who took their blood pressure, height and weight measurements. Then he would take several into a room at a time and give them a physical,” Gross said.
“There have been several students through the years that had a heart murmur so that he would not pass them to play. Whenever they could go see their own doctor after that, they would confirm it. Some eventually needed surgery. They did not know they had it until Dr. Seale found it. He would catch them immediately if a child had a problem. That happened several times,” Gross said.
“He said doing the physicals was part of his service to the community,” Ginger Seale said.
“Finally he simply had to quit, he said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’” Around that same time Seale began to cut back on his office hours until this fall he sent a letter to his patients announcing his retirement. The patients have literally come in crying after receiving Seale’s notice of his retirement, his wife said. “One said, “When I thought about your letter, I cried.’ We have seen so many come in who were really not so much sick as needing to come by and say good-bye,” Ginger Seale said.
His last day as a practicing physician in Union County was Friday.
“Even though he is retiring, he just returned from a continuing education course. He wants to keep his license up so he can treat family if he wants to,” Ginger Seale said.
With retirement, Seale will have time to pursue his avid interest in history. “There is a not a second of the day that he is not reading something and learning something. You could ask him anything about history and he could sit down and talk with you for hours,” Ginger Seale said. “He likes to hunt. When he retires he will go duck hunting and fishing. Right now he is re-finishing furniture for his children for a Christmas gift.”
Whatever he does in retirement, the area will feel the impact because as Dumas said, “Dr. Seale is very low keyed. He came to serve with a smile and never complained. He is going to be hard to replace. There is not another Dr. Seale.”