Editor's note: Frank Reynolds was named recipient of the 2014 Health Care Heroes Lifetime Achievement award during a Nov. 15 ceremoney. To read about the other Lifetime Achievement finalists, click here and here.

Frank Reynolds is described as a Wilmingtonian who has “dedicated his life to the wellbeing of children in this area for over 60 years.”

Those are the words of his nominator, local physician Todd Kornegay, but they are echoed by others of his medical colleagues who have written accolades about the longtime pediatrician.

Other tributes over the years provided by Reynolds and his family note the now-retired physician’s “caring, compassionate and loving care of his patients,” and his leadership in starting pediatric subspecialty clinics at then-New Hanover Memorial Hospital in 1968.

Born and reared in Wilmington, Reynolds began his medical education at UNC. He transferred to the medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed his studies. Over the next few years, the young pediatrician served in the U.S. Army during World War II and subsequently completed two, one-year pediatric residencies: one in Philadelphia and one at the James Walker Memorial Hospital in Wilmington.

“I decided on my specialty before going to med school. I had been treated by a pediatrician as a boy, and I liked children,” Reynolds said recently at his home.

When he opened his “modest” office at the corner of Dock and 17th streets in 1950, Reynolds said he was one of about six pediatricians in the area.

“There are between 60 and 80 now,” he said.

Now 94 and retired from his own practice since 1995 – although he continued to work in clinics until 2002 – Reynolds looks back on his 60-year career in which he not only treated patients but also helped shape the health care landscape in Wilmington. He remembers caring for children who came from several counties away to see him.

“He believed in making health care available to all children; that pediatricians should serve all children,” said his daughter, Margo Miars. “He had patients from farms that traded produce for health care services.”

Reynolds was also one of the first doctors to use advanced nurse practitioners in the New Hanover County Health Department “to be sure that all kids, especially underserved or underprivileged children, could be vaccinated against disease,” Kornegay wrote in his nomination.

In addition to providing personal care to his young patients, Reynolds was chief of staff at the former Babies Hospital and James Walker Memorial Hospital. He served as a trustee for the New Hanover Regional Medical Center. He was active with the N.C. Medical Society and helped found Med-Mutual Insurance Co., one of the largest malpractice insurance companies in the region, Kornegay wrote.

“Frank Reynolds is a role-model physician: the kind they ‘don’t make any more,’” he continued.
“He helped bring pediatrics to Wilmington at a time when access to health care was scarce. He has dedicated his life to the art and practice of medicine and has had an unfathomable effect on the health care of children in the Wilmington region.”