I have always lived in the moment with The Shopper, interspersed with side trips to explore future possibilities that fit those ‘what if’ ideas. The joy of being able to think ‘what if’ and then trying it is second only to celebrating successful outcomes!

An example of our most successful new idea, after thirty years of publishing The Shopper, was launching Doctor to Doctor Magazine in 2009. This year’s successful doctor publication will be sent to the Washington Post Printers at the end of August and mailed to all Southside Doctors and other medical personnel in mid-September. It was designed as a vehicle to connect doctors with each other by sharing their personal as well as their professional lives with their colleagues.     

We have enjoyed featuring doctors’ avocations—such as Internist Dr. Julius Miller’s fantastic nature photography and Neurologist Gil Snider’s mystery books. Physicians enjoy sharing their avocations just as much as they want to share the arrival of a new partner. Or, as we will find in this upcoming issue, the introduction of a whole new balance focus at ENT Specialists known as Fyzical®.

Early on, we viewed the social part of doctors’ lives with their wives and husbands. And my favorite theme was “Following in their Footsteps.” It was fun to inform others that doctors had parents, children, or both, who also practiced medicine! At that very time, Gynecologist Holly Perwitz announced the arrival of her son to The Group for Women, where she practices! We loved seeing the “Mother and Son” duo, similar to mother-and-son duo Sheila and Daniel Vacendak, Dentists located at the edge of Warrington Hall.

Happily, we acknowledge that Ophthalmologist Paul Griffey is a third-generation ophthalmologist practicing in Greenbrier and now in Edinburgh. We will wait to find out if any of our Southside doctors are fourth-generation physicians!

Knowing what colleagues’ lives are like cements relationships. It is time to present this “Footsteps” theme again in 2023, and we invite doctors to tell us if they are part of their own multi-generational family of physicians.

I believe we have been successful because we present doctors as more than physicians. We present them as who they are—socially, in family life, and at play, recalling the days when doctors made house calls.

Note:  We thank our advertisers for their support of Doctor to Doctor Magazine.