DaytonDailyNews.com

DAYTON — In Dr. Kent Scholl's office at East Third and Webb streets, patients with long faces sit in vinyl chairs in a wood-paneled waiting room with orange carpet.

They hold numbered cards in their hands and wait to be seen by the doctor who's cared for them most of their lives. Each comes with a particular ailment, but they all share a common ache on this day: Their longtime family physician is retiring, and they're just sick about it.

"We're not going to find another doctor as good as him," East Dayton resident Bill Hamilton said Tuesday, Oct. 28.

"I'm still waiting for him to change his mind," added Hamilton's wife, Juanita.

After 54 years in medicine, 51 on East Third, Dr. Scholl is calling it quits Friday, Oct. 31. Not that he really wants to.

"You want to know the real reason?" the 81-year-old Oakwood resident asked. "The insurance companies and the federal government."

Write a prescription, the insurance companies want to change it, he said. Send a bill to Medicare or Medicaid, you don't get the full amount. Want approval for a test or procedure for a patient? Good luck.

"If I didn't have to fight with them, I'd keep working," Scholl said.

Scholl's retirement comes at a time when fewer medical school graduates are entering family medicine and primary care, preferring specialties that carry shorter hours and higher salaries instead.

"We're all lost, because we don't have a doctor," said Scholl patient April Human, 54. "We can't find one like him."

Human and other patients praised Scholl as a doctor who made house calls to their parents and grandparents, a family doc who delivered more than 2,500 babies back when family docs still did that sort of thing. They remembered a physician who still came to work when he was confined to a wheelchair with a broken leg. And they smiled as they recalled the doctor and friend who made a special trip to his office at 8 one night to stitch up a patient who couldn't afford a trip to the emergency room.

If times were hard, Scholl would let you slide on the bill until they improved. Or if you knew a trade, he'd let you work it off through repairs on the 1886 building that housed his practice.

They spoke of days when Scholl's office was so crowded, his patients would spill from the waiting room into the foyer and up the steps leading to the closed-off second floor. Names carved in the banister prove it. "Autumn" carved her's twice.

"He was my grandparents' doctor, my mom and dad's doctor and now mine," said Michael Ashbrook, 40, of Bath Twp. in Greene County. "Every family member that's died, he's come to their funeral."

John Dixon of Washington Twp. said, "If it wasn't for Dr. Scholl, I wouldn't be here."

"This is a lost art in the medical industry," said the 55-year-old Dixon, a cancer survivor. "How many places do you go where you take a number? You come in when you're sick and you don't have to worry about him not seeing you."

Scholl grew up in Dayton, earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Dayton and his medical degree from Loyola University of Chicago. He interned at Miami Valley Hospital, served two years in the Air Force and returned to Dayton in 1957.

"It's just been a real love affair," said Scholl's wife of 30 years, Wendy. "He's always been happy here. He never wanted to go any other place."

In retirement, Scholl plans to fish, golf and travel, among other hobbies — if his patients let him leave, that is.

"I keep waiting for him to change his mind," said a tearful Carol Liles, 60. "I'm not ready."

Scholl embraced Liles. "You take care," he whispered.

"We love you," Liles told the doc as he walked away.

"Love you, too," he said.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7408 or agottschlich@DaytonDailyNews.com.