 Dr. Anthony McPherron |
Tribune Correspondent
PLYMOUTH -- Just about 19 years ago, Tony McPherron -- now Dr. Anthony McPherron -- graduated from Plymouth High School.
Last week, he was on stage again.
The "bone doc" was at Lincoln Junior High School to present the McPherron Scholar and Athlete Award to eighth-grader Mark Danielson.
Mark, 14, son of Randy and Eleanor Danielson, was a high honor student and co-captain of the Academic Super Bowl team, was on Lincoln's basketball, track, football and baseball teams.
He will enter high school in the fall.
The McPherron Scholar and Athlete Award is given in honor of the doctor's parents, Larry and Nancy McPherron, who worked a combined 63 years at Lincoln.
Larry was a teacher, coach and the only athletic coordinator the school ever had until his retirement in 2002.
Nancy was secretary, since 1975, to three principals and seven assistant principals at Lincoln. She also retired in 2002.
Next year there will be a Fabulous Four Scholarship, a $500 prize developed by McPherron and his wife, Kris, to be given to a student-athlete from Plymouth or John Glenn High School who has competed in a State Final Four athletic event.
The criteria also will include requirements that the winner -- and there may be as many as two a year -- carry a B average and be involved in community activities.
Tony loves athletics.
Actually getting injured in sports is what made him decide to become a doctor. He tore a ligament in his left knee when he was a senior on the 1985 PHS football team.
"I watched the surgical procedure on tape," he said, "and I thought 'that's cool, I'd like to be able to do that.'"
He'd thought about being a doctor before. His idol is former governor, Dr. Otis R. Bowen.
"Dr. Bowen had delivered me and he was always my role model, as a physician and a politician. I hope to follow in his footsteps and serve in politics someday, but I wasn't sure I wanted to go to school that long."
Fourteen years to be exact.
After undergraduate training at Indiana State University, graduating in 1990, with a degree in athletic training/sports medicine, Tony was accepted at six different medical schools.
He chose Ohio University Medical School in Athens, Ohio, graduating in 1994, as a doctor of osteopathy.
While in Athens, he served as team doctor for all of the varsity sports. He also worked with injured Indianapolis Colts players and became interested in reconstructive surgery.
He has worked with professional football, hockey and basketball teams and with individual baseball players.
"I guess you could say I fell in love with joints (replacements)," he laughed.
For the next five years, following a year of internship, the young doctor completed his residency at St. Vincent's Medical Center, Toledo, Ohio.
In the top 10 percent of his class, he was chief resident for two years, won the Outstanding Clinical Student Award, was picked by the other residents as Resident Educator of 1999 and was inducted into Sigma Sigma Phi, a national honor society for medical students.
He dedicated an extra year to the study of arthritis and joint replacement at Florida's Orthopedic Institute in Tampa.
While there, he assisted with Evel Knievel's "umpteenth" hip replacement and was involved in many of the 1,400 knee, hip and shoulder surgeries performed yearly at the Institute.
He and his family are dedicated PHS supporters.
The family includes Kris Hodges McPherron, his high school sweetheart and wife of 15 years: their four children: Danielle, Amanda, Brennan and Cassandra, and a black and gold dog, Keady -- named after Gene Keady, the former head basketball coach of Purdue -- Tony's favorite college team.
Tony recently received Indiana State University's College of Health and Human Performance's 2005 Distinguished Alumni Award. The only fellowship trained joint replacement surgeon in northern Indiana, Dr. Tony has been in practice with Specialty Orthopedics Inc., at Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center in Plymouth, since 2000.