For Dr. Myron Strickland, nothing has been more fulfilling in his medical career than seeing the face of a mother for the first time holding her newborn.
There’s a euphoria, he says, for mother and father alike.
“The joy and happiness of holding her child, with her tears and smiles,” Strickland, 68, said Thursday as he reflected on a medical career that has seen him deliver nearly 9,000 babies over 41 years. “It’s also probably the closest a couple will ever be at that moment in time.”
Strickland cherishes the moments of the once-young mothers, now with their children grown. He was there for their hopes, their fears and anxieties and their dreams of motherhood, and Myron Strickland would not change a single day.
“I’ve delivered two generations,” Strickland said. “Now, the mothers and their kids are my patients. It’s an honor to deliver the children of the children you delivered. Just to have that trust.”
His first-floor office of the Fayetteville Woman’s Care along Valleygate Drive was all but bare Thursday on a day when Strickland still had patients to see, and then there were just those patients who wanted time to say goodbye and to tell the obstetrician-gynecologist what he has meant to their lives.
Some couldn’t hold back their tears.
“They hug my neck, and I tell them thank you for trusting me all these years,” Strickland said. “I’m going to miss talking to my patients every day, and the relationships.”
Myron Strickland knew Friday would be his final day in the office, when he would remove his medical degree from the wall, take the Myron Strickland, M.D. nameplate from his door and take his leave from the center, where he has been since 1988.
Retirement has not been a quick decision.
Retirement has not been an easy decision.
“I’m going to feel lost,” he said. “I’m giving up what I’ve wanted to do since I was in the eighth grade. Sometimes, I wake up and tell my wife, ‘Martha, I had that dream again,’” Strickland said. “I feel like this will all have been a dream,” he says about his medical career.
A ‘country boy’ with a dream
Myron Strickland grew up in the Columbus County town of Chadbourn. His father farmed and drove a motor grader for the state. His mother worked as an accountant. Strickland can tell you all about tobacco, corn, hay and strawberry fields.
“We killed hogs every Thanksgiving and chickens every fall,” he said. “I’m a country boy. I wasn’t raised with a silver spoon in my mouth.”
Dr. F.M. Carroll was the inspiration for Strickland to pursue a medical career, as well as Willie B. Alston, who was Strickland’s eighth-grade science teacher at Westside Elementary School. An uncle, James Allen Cartrette, encouraged him along his way, too.
“We had a hometown doctor, Dr. F.M. Carroll,” Strickland said. “He did everything. Delivered babies, put in pacemakers and he was innovative in new technologies. I wanted to get out of Columbus County, and I was enthralled by what he did and how he took care of everybody.”
East Carolina University was in the beginning years of its medical school, and just 120 miles from Chadbourn.
Strickland enrolled at ECU, graduating in 1979 with degrees in biology and psychology, but medical school was calling his name, and Strickland says he was fortunate to know Dr. Ray Thigpen, who practiced medicine in Whiteville.
“I went and talked to him,” Strickland said. “He called the dean of the medical school and asked, ‘If they ever had a boy in medical school from Columbus County?”
Strickland would become the first, a part of what today is the ECU Brody School of Medicine’s fourth class.
He wanted to practice family medicine, or so he thought.
“But I realized I had a surgeon’s mindset,” he said.
He graduated from the ECU Brody School of Medicine in 1984 and completed his internship and residency at Charlotte Memorial Hospital in Mecklenburg County, where Strickland once delivered three sets of quadruplets.
He arrived in Fayetteville in 1988 to join with OBGYN physicians Dr. Ben Hayes, Dr. Sid Gardner, Dr. Glen Keeney and Dr. Dana Haithcock at Fayetteville Woman’s Care.
“You take out a gall bladder, and nobody remembers you,” said Strickland, a former chief of OB-GYN at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center from 2010-2016 and a past chief of surgery for the medical center. “You deliver children, and they follow you for life, and their families.”
‘Myron was with me’
Carolyn Zahran, 63, is a mother who holds Strickland close to her heart. She and husband, Steve, are the parents of three sons — Will, 29, who was born on April 4, 1996; Sam, 27, who was born Aug. 9, 1997; and Andrew, 25, who was born May 24, 2000. Myron Strickland delivered all their children.
She remembers the birth of Will Zahran.
“It was amazing,” she said. “I could have just cried. After going through the trauma of losing twins, it was just amazing. Myron was with me. He was just smiling.”
Carolyn Zahran was at the Fayetteville Woman’s Care on Thursday for what was an emotional goodbye.
“I said, ‘What am I going to do without you?’” she said. “He was very emotional. He was trying not to get choked up. He loves what he does. He always told me, ‘I love what I do.’ You could never ask for a better doctor. He is going to be missed. It is the end of an era.”
Vance and Lauren Townsend, like Steve and Carolyn Zahran, know the emotional pain of losing twins in 2012.
“They were born prematurely,” Lauren Townsend, 41, said. “It was long and emotional, and he was with us through it all, and then we got pregnant again.”
Maggie and Davis Townsend, who are twins, were born Aug. 5, 2013.
“Dr. Strickland was with us throughout the pregnancy,” she said. “He just definitely gave us that extra attention. He was with us every step of the way, just to make sure everything was good with us. Not only medically and physically, but emotionally.
“He’s one of a kind.
“There were times when I didn’t think that we would have a family,” she said. “I just didn’t think it was in the cards for us, and he stuck with us. He’s a very special person, not only for his medical expertise, but he’s just a great all-around person. He will go above and beyond for his patients. There were many days where he wasn’t working and he didn’t have to come in, but he knew our circumstances. With all those babies he’s delivered, he still makes you feel like yours are the most important. We probably wouldn’t have a family if it weren’t for him.”
OB-GYN physicians to come
Although his retirement has come, Strickland isn’t quite leaving health care behind. He plans to proctor surgeries at Cape Fear Medical Center when needed, and perhaps twice a week. He plans to mentor OB-GYN resident physicians.
“In every case when I’m operating,” he said, “I’ll have one or two residents in the operating room.”
Aspiring OB-GYN physicians will be blessed with a mentor who knows his medical craft. Beyond bringing those bundles of joy into this world, he has performed what he describes as some 12,000 surgeries to include vaginal hysterectomies, abdominal hysterectomies, laparoscopic hysterectomies, uterine, ovarian, cervical cancer surgeries and high-risk pelvic surgeries. He performed the first laparoscopic surgery in Fayetteville and introduced laser surgery at the medical center.
He has been an OB-GYN on the cutting edge of technology.
Strickland helped develop the harmonic scalpel now used worldwide, which simultaneously cuts and coagulates tissue and is used for a majority of laparoscopic lymph node removal.
He’s even giving consideration to working some months with Samaritan’s Purse in developing nations, where there is a need for skilled and seasoned surgeons.
“Anything you do there,” he said, “is better than what they have.”
Strickland also remains a member of the Cape Fear Valley Health System Board of Trustees, where he never has been afraid for his voice to be heard when it comes to the best of health care for this community and southeastern North Carolina.
“Dr. Strickland has always placed his patients’ care as his highest priority,” said Mike Nagowski, chief executive officer for Cape Fear Valley Health. “His surgical skills are among the very best. He is leaving a legacy of incredibly well-trained surgeons that he has mentored.”
Of compassionate heart
Myron Strickland has been that surgeon of compassionate heart for countless women and mothers-to-be in this community. He has listened to their worries, apprehensions, hopes and dreams in beginning families of their own. He is the physician who has stepped from behind his desk, sat beside them, held their hands and calmed their frayed nerves.
He’s not pretentious.
“I’m just a country boy,” he said. “Martha is excited for me to come home so we can spend more time together and visit our kids and grandkids. She’s been very supportive. She’s never pushed me to stop or retire.”
There’s a trip planned, he says, down at Ocean Isle Beach, where Strickland says this will be the first time in a long time that his family, including five grandchildren, will be together. And another grandchild is on the way.
Epilogue
Myron Strickland left the Fayetteville Woman’s Care office Friday, where he was greeted by about 100 mothers, who came to wish him well, and to be there as a reminder of what he has meant in their lives.
“I cried,” Myron Strickland said. “I’m still crying. It’s been a good life. It’s been a great place to practice.”
And some 9,000 mothers will tell you so, and that Myron Strickland forever will be a part of their children they hold so dear in their lives.
Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at billkirby49@gmail.com or 910-624-1961.
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