Unquestionably, Dr. R.W. Baird
was the outstanding physician of Dallas for the 40
years he was engaged in active practice from 1900
until the time of his death just prior to World War
II. He was born in 1870 in the vicinity of Shreveport,
Louisiana but was raised in Cleburne, Texas. (An interesting
side note is that his father was 70 years old when
the infant son was born and Dr. Baird’s grandfather
had lived at the time of the American Revolution.)
A dedicated Methodist, Dr. Baird received an A.B.
degree from Southwestern University in Georgetown,
the parent institution of Southern Methodist University.
His medical education was obtained at Bellevue Hospital
Medical College in New York City, from which he was
graduated in 1896. After an internship at Bellevue
Hospital, he took postgraduate work at the venerable
and prestigious St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in
London (“Bart’s”) following which
he located in Dallas in 1900. Here the young physician
soon built up a large following of loyal patients,
whom he served well. An astute diagnostician, he relied
primarily on a systematic history and physical examination.
His skill in percussion and auscultation of the chest
was legendary, in a time when chest films were done
sparingly. Most of all, however, it was his unhurried
systematic approach that endeared him to his patients
amongst whom were numbered the elite of Dallas. Indeed,
its leading citizens were his close associates, friends
and patients.
Dr. Baird became prominent in medical organizations.
For a time, he was Professor of Medicine at the old
Southwestern Medical School and, subsequently, Professor
of Clinical Medicine at Baylor in Dallas for many
years. He was an early day President of the Dallas
County Medical Society and served in the State Medical
Association as Chairman both of the Section in Pathology
in 1914 and of the Section on Medicine and Diseases
of Children in 1921. He was also a Founding Member
of the American College of Physicians.
Dr. Baird was a person of many talents – civic,
religious, and recreational. He was an organizer of
the Dallas Country Club along with Mr. H.L. Edwards,
an early day English cotton merchant who introduced
golf to Dallas – a game in which Dr. Baird became
proficient. He also was a charter member of the Brookhollow
Country Club, the Dallas Athletic Club, and the University
Club. Fishing was another of his hobbies to which
he applied himself earnestly and with relish.
Dr. Baird was an active churchman, the Highland Park
Methodist Church having been organized in his home.
He was a charter and long-time member of its Board
of Stewards. He married Lavina (“Mrs. Linnie”)
Bishop, the daughter of a Methodist clergyman. They
had 4 children: Sarah, who married a Dallas ophthalmologist,
Dr. Speight Jenkins; twin boys, William, who attended
Harvard Medical School and practiced in Houston and
Marble Falls, and Horace, who had a distinguished
record as a bombing officer in World War II; and Eleanor
(Mrs. Edward Campbell, Jr.) a talented player in the
Dallas Little Theatre. The Bairds lived in a spacious
corner home on Maplewood Avenue while the family was
growing up, but after the children left, they moved
to a modern cottage they built on Woodland Drive,
where Dr. R.W. and “Mrs. Linnie” were
gracious hosts to the clinic and personnel on many
occasions.
With his professional and social background along
with his innate charm, it was obvious that Dr. Baird
would require assistance to care for the demands of
his ever increasing practice. This, as we have seen,
he met first by a series of partnerships and finally
by the organization of the Dallas Medical & Surgical
Clinic.
R.W. Baird died suddenly of a coronary at age 71 in
1941. An obituary at the time read, “In his
death, Dallas lost one of its most useful and esteemed
citizens and physicians.”
Excerpted from The Dallas Medical & Surgical Clinic
by Harry M. Spence, M.D.
