By Stacey Hollebeek
Dr. Phil Kamps
I
Senior of the Year
t’s funny how events a world away and a century ago could alter even our an application for him for the newly opened obstetrics/gynecology residency small community. program at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Take Dr. Phil Kamps, for example. If his parents had remained in After three years working under Dr. Munsick, a talented, long-haired, China back in 1927 doing their Christian missionary work, and had not motorcycle-driving ob/gyn and endocrinologist, Kamps again returned to been chased out by Chinese war lords, over 7000 of us would probably Rehoboth Hospital. “There never was any pressure on anybody to come back – not have been assisted into this world by Dr. Phil Kamps, who, in the words of this is home, and that’s where you work. Why would I live anywhere else?” he one Gallup resident, is “the father of obstetrics in Gallup.” says. Even though he was the only obstetrician and, in a sense, was on call all the Instead, his parents were sent “temporarily” to pastor Rehoboth time, things were a bit easier when his brother, Dr. Jack Kamps, was added to Christian Reformed Church, and stayed to serve the people of this area for the the mix. “We all kept very busy,” he says. “I helped the surgeons, Jack would do rest of their lives. And Phil Kamps, now 72 years young, and recently voted the anesthesia – so we actually kind of enjoyed it. We were often the three of us Gallup’s celebrated Senior of the Year, was therefore born in the old Rehoboth doing surgeries at night. But everybody was so skillful and did their job so well Hospital, right where the Rehoboth post office stands currently. Born in 1939, together – we hardly yelled at each other!” the youngest of the six Kamps brothers, he is one of two brothers to serve his Before becoming a doctor, though, Kamps tried out a variety of other whole professional life as a local doctor. local professions, including chief carrot puller. For a time, his father served as a Initially, “I was planning to be a family practice physician, because that field pastor for the Navajo field workers in the extensive carrot fields of Milan/ was the need in Gallup,” Kamps says. After completing his pre-med undergrad Bluewater, staying in a motel there during the week. Nine-year-old Phil and at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, his medical training at Baylor his brother Jack, then 13 or so, waved the Greyhound bus down on the side in Houston, and his internship with six stunted weeks of pediatric residency in of Route 66, rode to Milan, then pulled and bound carrots all day for 10 cents Albuquerque, Kamps returned in 1968 from Vietnam to his birth place, literally, a crate. At the end of the day, while waiting to get paid and worried he would as one of two doctors. “VandenBosch and myself were the only two – we worked miss the bus back home, Phil burst into tears. It took some convincing from the more than 100 hours per week,” Kamps reminisces wryly. “I was either working bewildered field manager to assure him he’d catch the bus back home in time. or sleeping – I literally fell asleep with my head in the dinner plate.” When his son Jason was born in 1969 he says, “I was so The sleep deprived, I couldn’t handle it.” Kamps was spending more Gallup Senior of the time with his medical interns than his wife, Betty. She filled out Year Sponsored by
Rosebrough
26 gallupjourney@yahoo.com
Law Firm, P.C.