When William McCabe Jr. died Tuesday at the age of 80, the Forest community lost a role model for family physicians, friends of the longtime practitioner said.
McCabe, who graduated from Montvale High School and practiced at Forest Family Physicians, made an impact on the area not just through his medicine, but also through his community involvement, including founding the Sedalia Center in Bedford County with his wife, Annis.
McCabe was a multitalented musician with a deep appreciation for bluegrass. He also served as chief of staff at Lynchburg General Hospital and ran as the Republican candidate for the 23rd district in the mid-1970s.
Forest physician Dr. Thomas Eppes said a common mantra among McCabe’s friends back then was, “I’m going to vote for you but I hope you lose.”
He did. But Eppes said that was all right.
“I think that his heart was always with taking care of people,” Eppes said.
McCabe began his practice in 1959, and for a time was the only physician in Forest.
Dr. Robert Elliott, of Altavista, said his practice in Hurt originated as a satellite of the Forest Family Physicians office, where he practiced with McCabe for eight years, before McCabe’s retirement.
By the time he joined up with McCabe in 1987, Elliott said, “Some of the people he had delivered were actually having children.”
He said it wasn’t easy to prepare for his friend’s death.
“You have a friend and a mentor and a former partner … you hate to see him suffer, you hate to not have him around,” Elliott said.
Eppes recalled a man who wouldn’t give up his farming even though medicine was paying the bills.
“When he wasn’t busy he would go out and plow fields,” he said.
But what made McCabe most special, Eppes said, was the way he connected with his patients, at more than a surface level.
“He was a physician that understood the souls of people, and took care of them in the deepest of spiritual senses, as much as he ever did with medicines and therapies,” Eppes said. “It’s just incredible the knowledge and understanding of the community (he had)”
Elliott said even some of his patients were asking about McCabe when his health was failing.
“That meant so much to him,” he said. “There’ll never be another family doctor like Bill McCabe.”
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