Brookhaven's Dr. David Strong, 70, has stepped down as the volunteer physician at Brookhaven Outreach Ministries Clinic after 10 years of service. With no other doctors lined up to volunteer in Strong's stead, outreach founder and director the Rev. Jerry Durr has decided to close the clinic and refer its weekly patients to the newly established Family Health Care Clinic on Highway 51.
      "There's a point where you have to move on," Strong said. "I don't want a patient I felt like wasn't getting the best medication for what they have. I felt like it was time to move on and give someone else that opportunity."
      Strong first came to the clinic in August 1998, one month after he retired from his own practice in July of that year. He didn't know he'd almost immediately resume practicing medicine - this time for no pay - but he knew he needed a change.
      "I didn't necessarily know I would get out of medicine, but I knew I was going to change," Strong said. "Medicine was changing. The direction of medicine was changing to more a business field and not a compassionate field. I always said I didn't leave medicine, medicine left me. I went into medicine for compassion."
      Plenty of compassion lay ahead. Founded in 1993, the Brookhaven Outreach Ministries Clinic was designed to serve poor and uninsured patients and distribute free medication - which it gathered from requests to pharmaceutical companies and sample donations from local doctors.
      "We became known not only for who we saw, but for the medicine we provided," Strong said. "We would get references from the emergency room, McComb, Monticello - people would get discharged from the hospital, and they would give them some prescriptions and they couldn't get them filled. They just couldn't afford it. We had to almost have a person who that's all she did was order medication for people."
      Strong said the scramble to keep medication on the clinic's shelves "put (them) under the gun a little bit." The crunch continued until a major retailer unveiled its Four-Dollar Pharmacy plan in 2006, which allows almost 100 types of generic medicines to be prescribed for a monthly charge of $4.
      Strong said the clinic eventually picked up so many regular patients that his volunteering got to be like a practice on its own. The clinic continued to be visited by new, needy faces, but a core of more than 30 regular patients developed.
      "I figured it up, and with the hours, the services and the medications, over 10 years we gave over $1 million," Strong said. "That group never could have paid that."
      Of course, Strong couldn't dole out $1 million worth of free medical service alone. He has been joined over the years be a team of volunteers, among them his wife, Debra Strong, a registered nurse, former nursing teacher at Southwest Mississippi Community College and currently the faculty enrichment officer for Brookhaven's Hurst Review Service, a company that provides review services for students taking their registry exams.
      "The Lord always sent us someone, and someone good," she said of the clinic's volunteers. "We had a lot of really great people come and volunteer with us. It's been a faith journey - it's been amazing how we've been able to watch the Lord work in people's lives and use us as the tools to help them get there. We'll miss it, because it meant a lot to us as well."
      If he gets sentimental and starts missing his service, Dr. David Strong has a plan.
      "I always say if I miss it, I'll just go down and sit on the front bench at Wal-Mart. I can't go in Wal-Mart without people stopping me to talk and asking about their medicine," he said.
      The clinic's patients shouldn't miss a beat. Family Health Care Clinic President and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Margaret Gray said the office is ready to receive the outreach clinic's patients, saying her facility is up and running and is scheduled to add a dentist to its staff next month.
      Gray said her clinic will treat patients based on income, and will be able to provide reduced and sometimes free medication through its participation in the Pharmacy Assistance Program. She welcomes the influx of patients.
      "That's exactly why we are here - to serve people who have a need," Gray said. "It seems like it was very timely."
      Durr also believes the closing of his clinic and the opening of Gray's is timely, even divine.
      It's a big load the outreach clinic is transferring. According to Durr's records, in 2008 the clinic saw 469 patients and provided a total of $72,760 of equivalent service free of charge.
      "We feel that God just had this other one open up and they'll be able to meet those needs," he said. "This other clinic came just in time. They're already open and doing business, so we're just going to do referrals to them and focus on our food bank and other ministries. We've got more than enough to keep us busy."