'A miracle every time': Dr. Richard Stanley looks back on 44 years of new life

For Dr. Richard Stanley, retirement at age 76 comes with more than 15,000 reasons to be proud.

That’s the number of babies Stanley estimates he has delivered throughout his career of about 44 years.

“And I’m still doing it a little bit more this month,” he said, before he finally retires from his career in medicine.

He’s had several families deliver four generations with him, which he said is “unbelievable.”

“I don’t feel that old,” he said with a laugh. “But I’ve had the honor and the pleasure to be involved with those families for so long.”

Holding a card sent by a patient telling him how much he will be missed, he reads: “I can’t thank you enough for always being here when I needed you, whether it was medical or just your words of wisdom. Of course, delivering my two youngest girls was the most blessing. Enjoy your time, just don't drive too fast.”

A fan of fast cars (he’s down to “only one Ferrari” and his wife’s Corvette ZR1), Stanley is as comfortable discussing races at Monaco and Indianapolis as he is about a seemingly endless array of other topics, from his love of family to show dogs to fishing to college and high school sports.

Overarching everything, though, is the joy he’s felt when helping to bring new life into the world.

It’s an amazing experience every time, he said.

“Every time, I think it’s a miracle,” he said. “It’s God’s miracle if you believe in that, and I do.”

Finding his place

Why OB/GYN as a profession?

A bit humble, Stanley said "when I was on internal medicine, I knew I wasn’t the smartest character on the planet.”

On a more serious note, in that area of medicine, “you get to watch people die,” he said.

Being an OB/GYN, though, means you get to see new life come into the world, along with happy parents and special moments.

“God gave us new life in my hand here, and they just came right in this world,” he said.

Of course, “you can have some things happen,” he said, most of which are thankfully rare.

But in looking back on his career, Stanley said he wouldn’t change his choice of profession for anything.

“I like what I do, and I like delivering babies,” he said. “It’s been fun.”

Students who have worked with him often catch the same bug, Stanley said, telling a story of a recent physician assistant student who wasn’t sure what she wanted to do – until she worked with him.

“They don't do the delivery, but I show him what position the baby's head is in and all that stuff,” he said. “And once I put that baby in their arms, their eyes light up like you wouldn't believe − and they realize why I like doing what I do.”

From the beginning

Born in Stamford, where his father was the county agricultural agent, Stankey moved to Abilene “at the ripe, old age of two years old,” and has pretty much been here ever since, he said.

Graduating from Cooper High School fifth in his class and as an honor student, he went to Baylor University in 1964 to study chemistry.

Chemistry of another sort brewed there when he met Linda.

She was an elementary education major, he said, and the two became “college sweethearts" and then husband and wife.

“We cherish our Baylor degrees,” Stanley said, adding that while he considers himself a native Abilenian, his future wife was from “deep East Texas,” where her father was a judge.

They married Aug. 26, 1967.

The Stanleys went on to have three children, including daughter Dawn, who died in 2005, and Richie, who works as a counselor in Houston. Their youngest son, Russell, was born a bit later.

"Right now he's in Birmingham, Alabama, because he's done a urogynecology fellowship," Stanley said, adding Russell Stanley was a Baptist pastor for five years before he decided to take another path.

Russell's birth was somewhat special, said Stanley, holding up a photograph of him cradling his son in the delivery room.

“My wife insisted, absolutely insisted, I deliver this baby,” he recalled.

It made an already favorite thing about his job, seeing that new life come into the world, even more personal, he said.

Speaking on his philosophy for a happy marriage, Stanley said the formula is simple.

“It just depends on what you put into it,” he said. “And what we put into it is that we love each other, and we’re happy to be together.”

The road home

Going to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School until he graduated in 1972, Stanley did a rotating internship and OB/GYN residency at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, now Baylor Scott & White, until 1976.

From 1976-78 he served two years of military service, he said, at Dyess Air Force Base through the Berry Plan, a Vietnam-era program that let physicians defer obligatory military service until they had completed medical school and residency training.

“Nobody even knows what that is anymore,” he said.

He spent two years at Dyess as chief obstetrician, supervising two midwives and another OBGYN. He left with the rank of major.

In 1978, he entered private practice at what’s now Hendrick Medical Center North, staying there until 1996, when he was invited to come to what was Abilene Regional Medical Center, now Hendrick Medical Center South.

“I asked my wife four or five times because I really wasn’t certain about leaving Hendrick,” he said.

Her advice? “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Stanley recalled.

“She knows what she’s doing,” he said, a note of pride in his voice. “Dr. Charles Anderson and I came over together. ... We’ve delivered as probably as many babies as you can imagine.”

There was a time of transition, he said.

“For five years, Dr. Anderson and I were going back and forth to Hendrick North and over here transitioning our practice and delivering babies at both hospitals,” he said. “That is difficult. Trying to find a way over from one side of town to the other is not always easy, and the traffic has gotten even worse.”

Traffic concerns aside, “I love what I’ve done,” Stanley said, and the decision is one he doesn't regret.

Canine companions

The Stanleys have a history of show dog success, including wins at Westminster.

While he and his wife aren’t showing dogs right now, they do have a “beautiful” show dog, Phiona, a German Shorthaired Pointer, at home, he said.

“She won the breed here at the Abilene show the last time she showed,” he said, adding that COVID-19 proved disruptive to the dog showing circuit, as it did in other areas.

Another dog, Gordon, previously won Best in Show at Westminster.

Starting out with a love for miniature schnauzers, sporting group dogs “are our favorite now,” Stanley said.

Not to be anything but equal-opportunity, the Stanleys share their home with a couple of feline friends acquired along the way, Smokey and Meredith.

“Everybody's giving us their cats,” Stanley said with a laugh.

They also have two standard poodles that his daughter-in-law and son gave them.

“They’re just as smart as a whip, but they don’t have papers on them,” he said.

No one, he said, can take care of animals, or show them, as well as his wife, he said, and she’s a “whisperer” it seems for most.

“If we’re walking down the Baylor campus and somebody’s walking their dog out there, the dog stops and looks at my wife,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Balancing act

Work-life balance has always been important, Stanley said.

“You have to spend some time at home,” he said, often difficult when you’re spending a lot of time in hospitals.

“I’ll tell you the truth, when I was so busy and doing epidurals on my own patients, I spent a lot of time in hospitals and missed time with the family there,” he said.

While a doctor naturally spends a lot of time taking care of patients, he said he’s tried to be there for his children.

“I’ve made sure I've attended everything the kids did,” he said, including a Top 25 event when his son, Russell, graduated from Abilene High School.

“I had to take my suit over there with me to Hendrick North, and I delivered this baby and booked it down there and made it,” he recalled.

He does regard patients as family, he said.

But now?

“I’m just going to take it easy,” Stanley said.

Looking ahead

With more free time soon to be on his hands, he and his wife plan to visit Baylor more.

“We usually go to all the home conference games, and we’ll probably go to even the ones that are early this year,” he said. “Whatever time we get on that campus, we reminisce about being there when we were students.”

He also plans to go to Merkel to see his granddaughter, whom he also delivered. A former cheerleader, she now is involved in basketball and volleyball.

Add on some plans to hunt and fish, with perhaps return trips to Vancouver, British Columbia, where he caught salmon, abd trout fishing at White River in Arkansas, along with dove hunting, pheasant and quail hunting.

On the dove front, much depends on rain.

"My so-called stock tank, which my wife would call a pond being from East Texas, is really low,” he said.

Brian Bethel covers city and county government and general news for the Abilene Reporter-News. If you appreciate locally driven news, you can support local journalists with a digital subscription to ReporterNews.com.

This article originally appeared on Abilene Reporter-News: 'A miracle every time': Dr. Richard Stanley looks back on 44 years