Wilkes County Veterans History Project: Larry Kilby

No Need to Apologize

I am a native of Wilkes County who, after education and military service, came home to raise my family and pursue a career in medicine. For two years between 1970 and 1972, I served in the U. S. Air Force as a flight surgeon, achieving the rank of major before returning to civilian life. 

I am not a “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” my country, right or wrong, patriot. I don’t go to rallies, parades, or fireworks displays. I don’t join Veterans groups unless it’s Sons of the Confederacy. My family heritage includes veterans of the Confederacy as well as the United States in both World Wars and Korea.  Only one of my four uncles chose a military career, serving in Europe during WWII. He later died young in a peacetime military plane crash.  My Appalachian and Southern Heritage diffuse if not divide my loyalties.

After finishing Wake Forest College and Bowman Gray School of Medicine, I faced compulsory military service during the Vietnam War. I considered my options.  Option number one was emigration: Sweden, Canada, and England were all popular choices.   However, I felt I owed my family, my profession, and my self-respect too much to follow that path.  Option number two was to finagle draft evasion with disability, religious, career, and political maneuvers.  However, these didn’t seem honorable either.  In the final analysis, I went along with a process I could live with. Upon finishing medical school, I “volunteered” and chose to enlist in the U.S. Air Force.  I had real reservations about the war we were in. The country was being torn apart by the draft and war protests, women’s liberation, racial anger, and the United States’ poor performance in the war.  My spirit was oppressed.  Lastly, I had a wife, children, and a career to attend to.

Nevertheless, my going along for military service proved overall a pleasant experience.  My family traveled with me. I furthered my professional training, made lifelong friends, and gained new insights into myself, my country, and the world. 

After entering military service in September 1970, I underwent three months of flight medical officer training at Brook Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. I then spent twenty-one months as a flight surgeon at Eglin Air Force Base, near Fort Walton Beach, Florida.  Typical duties included maintaining my health and flying status as well as that of fellow flyers such as pilots and air crews. Our crews were supposed to feel as though they had a primary care doctor who knew their concerns and was trained to meet those concerns. This often involved being available to their families as well. This was supposed to help flight crews feel that someone was available for their family while they were away on demanding duty.  Military service was less intense than medical training, so I filled in my time with fishing, sailing, and exploring the Gulf Coast.  Even as the Vietnam War ground on, I was never ordered to serve in Vietnam.     

I resisted offers of promotion, good duty, and early retirement for extending my enlistment.  Instead, I came home to the county of my birth.  The bureaucracy of multiple bosses in academic medicine and military service proved to me that I had an independent personality.  Therefore, in September 1972, I began private medical practice in North Wilkesboro under the influence of Drs. Hubbard, Bond, and Hayes.  I have enjoyed meeting the challenge of a small-town medical office, plus  hospital, nursing home, state prisons, and jail service.  I have a soft spot for prisoners and the elderly.

In addition to other life experiences, my family and I visited Mexico almost every year in the 1970s and 80s. Additionally, my wife and I volunteered in Guatemala nearly every year during the 1980s. As a result of these experiences, one of my sons became an infectious disease specialist after spending a summer in Guatemala, while the other son pursued a career as an archaeologist with a special interest in the Southwestern United States.

I continue to enjoy what I am doing so much that I have a robust and growing private practice now in Winston-Salem and remain one of the few medical practices operating independently of modern healthcare conglomerates. 

Looking back at the end of my military career, it occurs to me that I came home at a time when my military service was not celebrated by many of my contemporaries.  President Carter gave draft dodgers the largest amnesty since the end of the Confederacy.  Ironically, now fifty years later, I am asked to stand for applause at church and civic meetings on Veterans’ Day and Independence Day.  Youngsters ask me to tell them my war stories. I am satisfied with my choices. I tolerate my country’s foibles, obey the law, and pay my taxes. I have looked and have not found a better country. I feel my country and I have given each other a fair exchange. If that’s not flag-waving patriotism, at least I don’t have to apologize.