REMEMBERING: Dr. Marvin Mack, physician, teacher, and most of all, friend

"Your staff at the Walk-In Medical Clinic wants to Thank You...."

 

COLUMBIA, Mo 4/5/14 (Remembering) -- Read the memories Dr. Marvin Mack's patients and staff shared about him after his death March 30, and you see the physician virtually every medical student wants to become.  

"Many people, even though he was their doctor, considered him a personal friend, counselor, and healer," long-time patient Vernon Niles told the Columbia Missourian, for a story about Mack's life.

"He was more like an extended member of the family than a doctor," patient Lisa Jeffries Pagett remembered.

"You realized there would be a wait to see him because he would allot the time needed for every single patient," a Columbia Daily Tribune reader recalled.  "He made a point to remember your family and your personal situation.  He was genuine and good."

A Mizzou Medical School graduate, Mack started Columbia's Walk-In Medical Clinic, where he saw patients for 25 years.   His staff remembers him just as fondly as his patients do, and asked the Heart Beat to publish their thoughts about a man who profoundly touched their lives.

 

To a truly wonderful man, your staff at the Walk-In Medical Clinic wants to Thank You:  

For your daily illustration of integrity and your commitment to decency. 

For entrusting us with the responsibility of caring for your patients.

For the push we sometimes needed to trust ourselves. 

For being the smartest person we will ever know. 

We want to thank you for your effortless sense of humor, and the jokes that kept us laughing for weeks. 

For routinely laughing so hard yourself that you didn’t even make a sound.

For your stories, always uniquely insightful and consistently hilarious.

We want to thank you for hating Facebook with a passion that some of us will share with you for life! 

For showing us all how a few well-placed profanities can really drive a point home. 

For so many great memories.

We want to thank you for exemplifying what it means to be honorable. 

For imparting on us what it means to be brave, and what the quiet strength of one person can achieve. 

For always having the answer and always making everything okay. 

For being our teacher and our friend. 

We are in awe of the loyalty a patient can have for their doctor.  In awe, of the loyalty and love an employee can have for their boss.  In awe, of the ability of one man to touch so many people.  It is testimony to the man that we have had the privilege to work for. 

We are so proud of the relationship we have developed with you and your patients -- our patients -- over the last 20 years. 

Thank you, Dr. Marvin Mack, for changing our lives.