By Elaine D. Briseño / For the Journal Jan 5, 2025
Editor’s note: The Journal continues “What’s in a Name?,” a once a month column in which Elaine Briseño will give a short history of how places in New Mexico got their names.
The arrival of the railroad and abundance of mining were certainly responsible for enticing people to New Mexico in the late 1800s, but there was a more lethal reason people crossed our borders – tuberculosis.
From about 1870 to the 1940s, people flocked to the state, seeking a cure, believing New Mexico’s dry and sunny climate would help dry out their lungs. One such patient also happened to be a medical doctor.
His name was William R. Lovelace. He would go on to establish his own practice that would eventually become Lovelace Clinic and ultimately Lovelace Health System, which serves thousands of New Mexicans today.
Lovelace was born July 27, 1883, inside a log cabin in Dry Fork, Missouri. His father had many trades, including bookkeeper and farmer, and could trace his line back to Sir Richard Lovelace in England. Lovelace’s friendship with the family’s physician in Missouri led to an early love of medicine and eventually inspired him to enter the field.
He received a medical degree from St. Louis University Medical School in 1905 followed by an internship at St. Mary’s Hospital in St. Louis. It was during this period his life shifted course. He contracted tuberculosis and moved to New Mexico hoping for a cure.
His first stop was Fort Sumner in 1906 where he hoped to cure his condition and also set up a medical practice. He became a surgeon for the Lantry-Sharp Construction Company and the Santa Fe Railroad. According to his obituary, he “lived and practiced in a one-room, tar paper building.” He made his calls via horse and buggy.
Far from the grand hospitals bearing his name today.
He upgraded to a new building in 1908 that had an office, his living quarters and a drugstore, but a storm wiped it out in 1910.
His parents, sisters and brother (father of Lovelace II) would all follow “Uncle Doc” to New Mexico at some point. He migrated to Albuquerque with his mother in 1913. According to his obituary, Lovelace once recalled to friends that he was unable to find a job with any of the Albuquerque hospitals when he first arrived. But, no spoilers here, he didn’t stay unemployed for long.
He became a staff member at St. Joseph Hospital, as well as the Southwestern Presbyterian Hospital and Sanitorium and the Methodist Sanatorium. He went on to become a member of the State Board of Medical Examiners in 1913 and served as president of the local medical society in 1914 and 1915.
Lovelace opened the clinic in 1922 with his brother-in-law, Dr. Edgar T. Lasseter. The men based the clinic on the model of group practice that was used at the Mayo Clinic, according to the health system.
The first glimpse of the sprawling healthcare system it would become came in 1973, when Lovelace Clinic merged with the Bataan Memorial Hospital to become Lovelace Health Plan with 2,200 members. The first primary care center opened in Rio Rancho in 1975 and by the early 1980s it employed 85 physicians and had 32,300 patients. It would expand to Santa Fe that decade as well. It celebrated 100 years in 2022.
It has continued to expand, adding several hospitals to its roster including the Heart Hospital of New Mexico at Lovelace Medical Center, Lovelace Women’s Hospital, Lovelace Westside Hospital and Lovelace UNM Rehabilitation Hospital. It also has 33 health care clinics and several outpatient therapy clinics, 300 health care providers, according to Lovelace Health System.
All of this because Lovelace chose to call New Mexico home. But he didn’t build a massive health system alone. He had help from his nephew, William Randolph Lovelace II. He followed his uncle into medicine, graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1934. He served residences at Bellevue Hospital in New York and the well-respected Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
The combined contribution to the field of medicine here and across the country have made Lovelace a household name in New Mexico.
Lovelace II moved to Albuquerque in 1946 to join his uncle at Lovelace Clinic. The two would go on to establish what is now known as Lovelace Biomedical in 1947. It was a specialty medicine clinic and Lovelace II used his ties with the aviation community to establish it as the premier center for research of aviation and space medicine in the 1950s and 1960s, according to company history.
Today the clinic is an independent, not-for-profit preclinical drug development research organization but is still located in Albuquerque and continues with a strong focus on respiratory research.
However, Lovelace II made his biggest mark on the national stage.
He became a flight surgeon with the Army Medical Corps Reserve as a first lieutenant, where he began researching problems of high altitude flight. A fortuitous meeting with female pilot Jacqueline Cochran in 1940, who had held three speed records, would lead to a lifelong friendship and his ground-breaking Women in Space Program later in his life.
Lovelace II believed women had an aptitude to become astronauts and that their smaller, lighter bodies gave them an advantage because they could fit into smaller space vehicles. He helped develop the test NASA gave its Mercury Seven male astronauts and administered the same tests to the women through the privately funded Women in Space project.
President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Lovelace II director of space medicine for NASA in 1964. Sadly, the younger Lovelace would precede his uncle in death. He and his wife were traveling in a private plane near Aspen, Colorado, on Dec. 12, 1965, when it crashed into a canyon, killing the couple and the pilot.
The elder Lovelace would die three years later in his sleep on Dec. 3 at the age of 85. Despite his great accomplishments and legacy, he never forgot his roots and always considered himself a country boy, according to his obituary. He spent his 80th birthday at a cabin in the Sandias just to “fool around chopping a few limbs off the trees.”
Lovelace never married or had his own children but that didn’t mean his death went without notice. Many paid him tribute upon his passing, including New Mexico Gov. David Cargo, who told the Albuquerque Tribune that Lovelace was a “truly outstanding man” in a Dec. 4 article.
“Rarely do men come along with the qualities of greatness that Dr. Lovelace possessed,” Cargo said. “His contributions to his profession, as well as to his state and nation, were profound.”
Both Lovelace doctors are buried in Albuquerque at Fairview Memorial Park.
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