Richard Douglas Buchanan, M.D., 75
Richard Douglas Buchanan , M.D., 75, known always as "Mickey," passed away Thursday, May 22, 2008, at his home. He was born July 21, 1932, in Porterville, Calif., the offspring of Scots-Irish pioneers of California's Great Central Valley. The family roots traced to pre-Revolutionary times; in Lancaster County, Pa., his great-grandfather came west in 1864 via the Halliday Stage and could conceivably have been on the same coach with the Irish patriot Thomas Francis Meagher, who became the first territorial governor of Montana.
Mickey graduated from Porterville Union High School in 1950 and then matriculated at the University of Oregon. After one year, he transferred to the University of California at Berkeley and then received his M.D. from the University of California Medical School in San Francisco in 1957. While in college, he spent three summers working in the salmon industry in Prince William Sound, Alaska, and three summers working for the U.S. Forest Service in Sequoia National Forest. He spent 10 days each year backpacking in the High Sierras.
He began skiing in 1948, and in 1949 and 1950 skied with Warren Miller at Mammoth Lakes when they only had rope tows. By 1958, he completed his goal of skiing every major ski resort in the United States and Canada. He interned in Burlington, Vt., to help accomplish this.
He then had two years of sea duty with the U.S. Navy as a medical officer with the Destroyer Force/Atlantic, home port at Newport, R.I.
After two years of general practice residency at Sonoma County Hospital in Santa Rosa, Calif., he began a solo practice of medicine in Columbia Falls in July 1962. He was quick to point out the greatest thing he ever did for his family was to move them out of California. In 1967, he built a new office at Nucleus and First Street. He had full privileges at Whitefish Hospital and Kalispell General Hospital. He described himself as the last of the general practitioners and the first of the board-certified family physicians. In 1979, after five hip replacements, he quit working. At the time, he was the chief of staff of the new North Valley Hospital.
On Sept. 13, 1957, he married Jeannette Sanborn. After 27 years, they divorced. The couple had four daughters, Lorretta of Robards, Ky., Jessica of Port Townsend, Wash., Cynthia of Phoenix, and Lynda of Sweetgrass. They also had nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Dr. Buchanan was on the board of directors of the Kalispell Ski Club, Flathead Valley Community College, Columbia Falls Chamber of Commerce, Montana Academy of General Practice, and the Montana Foundation for Medical Care. He was the first president of the Columbia Falls A.F.S. foreign student exchange program and a vestryman at St. Matthews Episcopal Church. He celebrated 25 years of recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous on Feb.16, 2006.
Austin Funeral Home in Whitefish was in charge of local arrangements. No services are planned.