Irene and Norman Erie, M.D. Endowed Scholarship
EST. 2014
Please address your letter to:
Dr. Erie
The Life of Irene and Norman Erie
by Norman Erie, M.D.
This is the history of two people who grew up in separate, small towns in Montana and somehow got together and lived a pretty exciting, busy and productive life with each other.
Irene Konecny was born in Stockett, Montana on November 3, 1925. She was the 13th and last child of Suzanne and Charles Konecny. When she was three years old, her father was killed in an automobile accident, and just months after began the Great Depression. The family struggled but survived. When she was high school age, near the beginning of World War II, she moved to Great Falls to live with John D. Stephenson’s family. He was an attorney in Great Falls. She enrolled in St. Mary’s High School where she excelled. She graduated in 1944 and immediately started taking classes at the College of Great Falls, graduating with honors in 1947. To me, she was brilliant, very confidant, mentally strong and she lived with very high personal standards in everything that she did.
I was born in Leeds, North Dakota on October 22, 1931. My father was a farmer, but lost his farm during the Great Depression. He moved the family to Eureka, Montana in the fall of 1937. He did odd jobs for about a year and then got on permanently with the Great Northern Railroad, where he spent most of the rest of his working life. Years later, my older brother also worked for the railroad and it was assumed that I would do the same after high school. But I had dreams of furthering my education and going into healthcare, but with no resources I had no idea how to get there.
Miss Konecny came to Lincoln County High School in Eureka in 1948 as our new teacher in English and Literature. She made those dreams come true by arranging a scholarship for me at the College of Great Falls and a position as a student x-ray technician at Columbus Hospital. By the time I graduated from high school, I was hopelessly in love with her. Against great and what seemed to me to be near impossible odds, and I am certain with a big dose of divine intervention, I finally convinced her to be my girlfriend. After she finished the final year on her contract at LCHS in Eureka, and I had finished my freshman year in college, we were married in July 1951.
I graduated from CGF in 1953, and with strong encouragement and support from my wife, I applied for admission to the University of Washington School of Medicine. To my absolute utter amazement, I was accepted. We moved to Seattle in the fall of 1954 with an eight-month old son, another child on the way and about $300 to our name. After our second child was born, Irene worked as a social worker at King County Hospital while I continued on in medical school, graduating in 1958. We then entered the U.S. Navy and interned at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Great Lakes, Illinois. In the fall of 1959, I went to flight surgery school in Pensacola, Florida and then served out my three-year remaining military obligation as a flight surgeon at the U.S. Naval Air Station in Whidbey Island, about 75 miles north of Seattle. On January 3, 1963, we opened a solo private practice in Richland, Washington. Irene managed my office so that I could spend my whole time and energy on patient care.
I was the first general practitioner, and later family physician, to practice in Richland and have privileges at Kadlec Hospital. My first eight years in Richland were very busy, seeing 50 patients a day plus hospital patients, including about five deliveries a month, and working over a hundred hours a week. In the early 1970s, two new general practitioners arrived and were soon followed by emergency room physicians, and so my life greatly improved. I now had time to involve myself in more volunteer work. This led over the years to activities in local medical societies, and later in state and national societies. In the mid-1980s, I was elected president of the Washington Academy of Family Physicians and then president of the Washington Academy of Family Physicians Health Foundation. This was followed by being elected one of two delegates from the state of Washington to the American Academy of Family Physicians, an organization at that time had over 50,000 members. Other activities included a five-year appointment as a member of the University of Washington Advisory Board that oversaw the family medicine residency sites for training family physicians in Washington, Alaska, Idaho and Montana. This was followed by a term on the admissions committee at the University of Washington School of Medicine for six years. For all of these activities, I was selected as Family Doctor of the Year for the state of Washington in 1988. During all of this time my wife was in the background supporting me with advice and love.
We lived a very fulfilling and wonderful life together. About two weeks after our 61st wedding anniversary, the angels came and took her from me. She was 86 years old and left behind her husband, four children and eight grandchildren. Because of her strong belief in the great importance of education, all of us have at least a college education, except for Adam who is only 15. Including me, there are two physicians, an attorney, two nurses, two engineers, an opera singer, an elementary school teacher, two business majors – one working at Microsoft and the other for the Bureau of Reclamation – and one fine arts major.
During the years that my wife and I struggled through my many years of education on limited means, we found that many people and institutions were willing to help. This included the University of Washington School of Medicine. They gave scholarship help when we needed it most. I am proud to now be able to pay back by establishing the Irene and Norman Erie, M.D. Endowed Scholarship for medical students from the state of Montana. Even though Irene and I lived more than two-thirds of our lives away from Montana, we are still Montanans. After all, the saying goes “you can take the person out of Montana but you cannot take Montana out of the person.” Thank you.
