In Memory of Physicians We’ve Lost

Jack C. Biggs, MD

Jack Clayton Biggs, 94, of Olive Branch died Jan. 31, 2021. He was born Jan. 13, 1927 in Memphis. He graduated from Tech High School, Memphis State University, and studied medicine at the University of Tennessee Medical School where he graduated as a family physician. He was an accomplished doctor who practiced medicine in Nettleton, MS, Truman, AR, and Southaven, MS, before retiring in 1994. Before he became a doctor, he served in the U.S. Army during World War II where he was stationed in Japan. After the war, he worked at the post office. He is survived by his wife, Janice, two children and two grandchildren. MAFP has made a donation to the MAFP Foundation in Dr. Biggs’ name.

Ed Carruth, MD

Services for Dr. Edward L. Carruth of Meridian were held at graveside on August 19, 2020, in Enterprise Cemetery.

Dr. Carruth, or "Doc" as he was known to his friends, was born in Brookhaven on October 11, 1940. He attended Summit High School and graduated from McComb High School in 1958. He graduated from the University of Mississippi Medical School in 1965. After post-graduate training at MS Baptist Hospital, he served in the United States Air Force during the Vietnam war. He was named Flight Surgeon of the year for USAF, ATC in 1967.

Following his military service, Dr. Carruth returned to family practice, first in Jackson, then in Madden, Mississippi, and finally to his destiny in Meridian. He held many offices and positions of leadership including Chief of Medical Staff at Thaggard Hospital and Meridian Regional Hospital. Dr. Carruth was a lifetime member of East MS Medical Society, MS State Medical Society, and American Medical Association. He was board-certified in Family Medicine, with the additional honor of Fellow, American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP). He was an AAFP lifetime member and a past MAFP Foundation Trustee. In 2008, he received the MAFP Military Service Award.

Dr. Carruth is survived by his wife, Olinda Metz "Lin" Carruth, seven children and 12 grandchildren. MAFP made a donation to the MAFP Foundation in Dr. Carruth's memory. If you are interested in contacting Lin and the family, they can be reached at 1030 Erwin Road, Stonewall MS 39363.

Harry Frye, MD

Dr. Harry C. Frye, Jr. passed away Jan. 10, 2021, at the age of 98. He earned a medical degree from Tulane Medical School and completed a family medicine residency at Vicksburg’s Mercy Hospital. Since 1952 he served on the staff of Magnolia’s Beacham Memorial Hospital. In the military, Dr. Frye served as a Sergeant in the 26th Infantry division, Canon Company. For service during the Battle of the Bulge, he was honored with the Bronze Star.

He was preceded in death by his wife, Helen. MAFP has made a donation to the MAFP Foundation in Dr. Frye’s name.

Bill Minor, the late Mississippi syndicated columnist, wrote this about Dr. Frye in 2005:

“My old friend Dr. Harry Frye down in the small town of Magnolia is a member of what you would call an endangered species; he is a family doctor in a day of specialists.

“And Harry, now age 82, having had more than his own share of health setbacks, isn’t ready to pack up his stethoscope and medical kit and with his wife, Helen, retire in some idyllic destination.

“You’ll find Harry daily shuffling along the hallways of tiny Beacham Memorial Hospital making his rounds, his arrival and healing touch eagerly awaited by his patients. Unlike most doctors, Harry Frye keeps his home number in the telephone book and it’s not unusual for him to give a bit of medical advice on the phone.

“It’s also not out of the question for the silverhaired octogenarian doc to make house calls, even though he insists: “I don’t make a lot of house calls, just mainly a few old friends.’ Somehow, during the recent influx into his community of dozens of Katrina refugees needing medical attention, one gets the feeling that’s only part of the story.

“That’s what you have to understand about Harry Frye. Almost invariable, from his own World War II experience, to saving the public school system in southern Pike County, to becoming a beloved country doctor, he understates his own significant role in his lifetime’s many achievements.

“At least the Mississippi Academy of Family Physicians, despite any demurrers he may have offered, have named Harry Frye ‘Family Physician of the Year’ and toasted him as exemplifying the finest tradition of family medicine in his 53 years of practice in his oak-shrouded little gem of a town near the Louisiana line.

“(Again the Frye rejoinder: ‘I guess they figured at my age they might as well give it to me because I might not be around much longer.’)

“I first got to know Harry Frye back in 1967 when he was president of the South Pike School District board (he served on that board 47 years). I wrote about his innovative idea of bringing white and black students from the two segregated high schools slowly into a mixed educational setting before court-ordered integration he saw coming. ...

“However the Ku Klux Klan saw it differently and Frye became a target. Klansmen tried to burn a cross in front of his house, but like the thief who couldn’t shoot straight, the cross was fired off in front of the wrong house, much to the dismay of the dentist who lived there.

“As a student at Millsaps College in Jackson after World War II began, Frye faced being drafted. With 20 other Millsaps students, he marched down to the Army recruiting office in 1943 and volunteered. A year later, he had a commission and was assigned to the 26th Infantry division. Before being shipped off to France not longer after D-Day, he married his college sweetheart, Helen. …

“Out of the army and back in Mississippi, he was stricken with polio in 1945. He survived then then-dreaded paralyzing disease, but it left him struggling to relearn how to walk with braces and crutches.

“Despite his handicap, and with a new determination to help others, Frye was accepted at Tulane Medical School where he made good grades and befriended Dr. Alton Ochsner, the noted anti-smoking pioneer.

“For no particular reason except the town’s charm, the Fryes settled in Magnolia in 1952 where he opened his medical practice. Within a few years, he and a partner bought Beacham Memorial, the 37-bed rural (now non-profit) hospital he has helped keep alive for 50 years, sometimes tiding it over with out of pocket loans.

“The small hospital and Frye’s adjacent four -doctor clinic went full-blast after Katrina scattered dozens of evacuees around their area from nearby Louisiana. Included were 50 elderly residents of a Chalmette nursing home who with their nurses were housed in a large Baptist church just down the road from Magnolia.

“Frye and his cohorts (‘they did most of the work’) looked after medical needs of evacuees, many of whom had fled without their medications. ‘We were able to figure out what medicines they needed,’ Frye says. So the good country doctor keeps making his rounds, and most of all, dispensing a heavy dose of compassion.”

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