When Bill Warren decided to become a doctor, he wasn’t just choosing a career path—he was continuing a family legacy.
Warren’s uncle, Bryan, began a practice in Laurel in 1925 and with the help of Bill’s father, John, opened Laurel’s first hospital in 1939. The facility on Prince George Street served Laurel’s mostly rural population at the time.
‘‘There was nothing around,” Bill Warren said. ‘‘It was like going to a different country, to get to Baltimore or Washington, D.C. to go to a hospital.”
Now Bill Warren, 64, continues to practice medicine at the same practice that his father and uncle began 83 years ago. But the medical field today isn’t what it once was, he said.
Warren remembers accompanying his father during his frequent afternoon and evening house calls, where he would tend to people by their bedsides. The Warrens even delivered children in patients’ homes. And patients, who were often farmers, would pay John Warren with eggs and produce, his son recalled.
‘‘I was just exposed to it all my all. Back then it was a very romantic and wonderful thing to see him helping people. It was still the golden age of medicine,” he said.
Warren told his parents he had decided to pursue medicine and went onto college and medical school. When he finished in 1975, he returned to Laurel. His uncle was retiring, and he wanted to join his father, John, in the practice. John Warren retired five years later, but his son stayed on.
Bill Warren said many of his patients have been in his practice longer than he has, like 85-year-old North Laurel resident George Walter.
Walter first came to the Warrens’ hospital in 1946 to get his appendix removed. He met a nurse there, Vickie, who later became his wife.
‘‘World War II came along and there weren’t that many doctors around,” Walter said.
The Warrens discontinued the hospital through the war, but reopened it as Laurel General Hospital in 1959. They then closed it in 1965 to renovate a new building and reopened in 1967 as a general practice in an office at 321 Prince George St., where Bill Warren still practices. Laurel Regional Hospital opened in 1978 to serve the Laurel area.
In 1985, John Warren died, but Bill continued with the practice. Fifteen years ago, he renamed the facility the Warren Memorial Medical Center to honor his uncle and father.
Harry Harrdingham, 93, was mayor in Laurel during the 1960s and said Warren’s dedication is reminiscent of that of his father and uncle.
‘‘All the Warrens are dedicated to their profession,” Harrdingham said.
And Bill Warren still looks to his father and uncle for inspiration, who he refers to as ‘‘the original iron men of medicine.”
‘‘They were doing amazing things, old time country doctors,” he said. ‘‘They were the ones going to the house and sitting by the bedsides until the crises of pneumonia broke. That’s the kind of thing that most of us dream about, think about and aspire to.”
