John Ladd crafts stringed instruments and keeps the beat on medical issues

By MIKE McINALLY
Gazette-Times

Dr. John Ladd has noticed how Corvallis frequently shows up on those lists of best places to retire. Now, he’ll finally get a chance to find out firsthand if that’s true.

After nearly 40 years as a rheumatology specialist at The Corvallis Clinic, Ladd, 71, recently officially retired. “I’ve worked a little longer than most of my colleagues,” he said.

Part of the reason for that, though, was wanting to be sure that his patients weren’t left in the lurch. For years, Ladd was the only rheumatologist in the mid-valley. While the clinic searched for a replacement, Ladd stayed on the job. (Rheumatologists usually work with clinical problems involving joints, soft tissues and connective tissues.)

But with a new rheumatologist, Dr. Yong Zhu, starting this month at the clinic, Ladd finally was free to retire. That means more time for passions such as building string instruments. Ladd has a hankering to build a double bass — a big project even for someone who’s hand-built violins, a viola and a cello. It means more time for his homemade telescopes, and even possibly a trip to Australia to view the stars Down Under.

And it even means some time reflecting on a life in medicine, and the challenges that the health-care system faces today.

One of the pleasures of working as a rheumatologist, Ladd said, is the ability to build long-term relationships with patients. But today’s new doctors, coming out of medical schools saddled with huge bills for their education, can’t be blamed for moving into areas that are more lucrative, he said.

“One of the problems in our medical system is that there’s high compensation for procedures and not high compensation for taking care of patients,” he said.

Ladd himself started taking care of patients after studying medicine at the University of Michigan and interning at the University of Oregon Medical School in Portland (now Oregon Health & Science University).

When it came time to look for a home to build a permanent practice, he was intent on leaving the Midwest. He succinctly explained why: “Ice.”

After enduring a number of Midwest winters, he finally asked himself: “Do I have to live like this?”

He scouted out locations on the West Coast from San Francisco to Seattle and finally settled in Corvallis in 1969. He’s watched the clinic — as well as the practice of medicine — grow and change over the years.

“There’s just been dramatic changes in technology and treatment,” he said. “That’s been wonderful to observe that, and to be a part of that.” And practicing medicine in a small town like Corvallis has been rewarding as well.

But he worries about the dramatic increase in the health-care costs. He noted that in the late 1950s, when he was still in medical school, health-care expenses made up 7 percent of gross national product. Now, the percentage is up to 17. “If you let us, we’d spend the whole gross national product,” he said. “We haven’t figured out how to handle the cost of that.”

Ladd thinks the United States needs to move to some kind of universal health care, but he believes that needs to go hand-in-hand with some rationing and restriction of medical services in certain cases. All that, he said, will require considerable education of the public.

In the meantime, Ladd will continue his own education in woodworking. He started by building furniture, but after a while, “I ran out of space to make more furniture.” Then he saw a book about how to build violins, and he started building them.

Precision is even more critical in making violins than it was in building furniture: “If a table is a quarter-of-an-inch off, you don’t think anything of it,” he said, but that distance could make all the difference with a musical instrument. It takes him about a year to make a violin. Now, he’s getting set to launch work on that double bass.

When that’s done, it’ll be one more achievement in a life full of them.

“You like to feel like you’ve accomplished something in your life,” he said.