A Brief History

As anyone who has either visited or lived in the Rockbridge County area can tell, it is an area of immense natural beauty coupled with cultural and intellectual opportunities. The location of three institutions of higher learning in a rural area with a population of 32,000 gives the appearance of wealth. The recent influx of a large number of retirees from all over the United States tends to accentuate that appearance. However, behind this is a different picture.

As recently as 1985 an article in the Roanoke Times identified Rockbridge County to be one of the areas in Virginia with the highest percentage of houses with no indoor plumbing. The city of Buena Vista traditionally has been and remains a blue-collar town with jobs tied to industry. Within this same ten-year period Buena Vista has lost two sewing factories, Reeves Brothers Manufacturing, a Blue Bird school bus assembly plant, and a wire manufacturing plant. Although some industry has moved into these old plants, at least two of the biggest still stand empty with subsequent loss of jobs and income. The remainder of the county, excepting the colleges, is principally rural with an economy based on small farming that has changed little in the last fifty years. The net result of this is that beneath the appearance of wealth there is a substrata of significant poverty. Many of these people are either medically uninsured or under-insured. Also included in this group are the elderly, retired or disabled with at least some type of insurance for physician visits but no means of paying for prescribed medications. It was in an attempt to meet the needs of this segment of our population that the Rockbridge Area Free Clinic was established.

There has been an historical need for health care for the needy in our area and there has been a community response to that need. Around the time of the Depression a Children's Clinic was established in Lexington to provide medical care to children in the county whose parents could not afford medical care. The Clinic ran successfully until the early 1960's, when it ceased to function. For a long time the medical community recognized the need for a mechanism to provide care to needy individuals and families.

In the early 1990's a group of concerned citizens began working on the concept of a free clinic. They were able to marshal both interested medical and non-medical community volunteers in a project that became the Rockbridge Area Free Clinic. Our first clinic was held in the office of the local public health department on December 17, 1992. Since that first night, the clinic has continued to grow in both patients and services. Now it is the sole point of medical service for many citizens of the area. The Clinic also provides pharmaceutical services to a significant portion of our targeted population who otherwise could not afford these medications. We have a nurse practitioner who not only provides care for chronic or long-term illness but, in addition, provides acute care services and counseling. Area physicians provide medical care every Thursday evening on a volunteer basis. Laboratory, radiology, and physical therapy services provided by Carilion Stonewall Jackson Hospital round out the range of programs provided at the Free Clinic.

The services mentioned are all quantifiable. What is not quantifiable is the measure of hope and assurance of medical care that we are able to give to those less fortunate in our community. This is perhaps our most important service and truly our reason for existence.