There are few job descriptions as apt as the family doctor.
Their clients can be any age, from newborn to 100.
A family doctor may be there when their patients are born, when they grow old and have kids and grandkids, and finally, when they die.
It’s been said that family doctors who have been around long enough are considered just that — family.
It’s what kept Dr. Brian Wolfe going for as long as he has.
“Part of the reason I kept practicing is that I enjoy it,” Wolfe said. “And one of the biggest parts of that is just people.
“I tell them the reason I keep doing this is because I get to talk to people like you.”
Alas, as families grow older, so do their doctors.
Wolfe, 73, is hanging up his stethoscope on Wednesday, 44 years after coming to Iola as a family practitioner.
Telling his patients has been emotional, he admitted.
“I had a lady who came in and said her kids have never had any other doctor besides me, and they’re in their upper 20s,” Wolfe noted.
Another patient, age 88, recalled meeting Wolfe not long after he moved to Iola.
“That was 44 years ago,” Wolfe reminded him. “I think we grew up together.”
And while Wolfe’s legacy in Iola has long been secure — even if you just consider his medical career — it’s not a stretch to say his work for a better community will be felt for generations.
Consider Wolfe and the retired Dr. Glen Singer, who arrived in Iola a year apart, created The Family Physicians clinic in 1982.
The Family Physicians has since folded — Wolfe left in 2013 — but getting it launched meant the construction of two facilities, the first at 201 West St., now the home of GoodLife Innovations, and the second, built in 2008, at 1408 East St., which proved as a key incentive for federal officials to place a Veterans Administration office there in 2024.
