Dr. Melvin K. Bottorff, a physician and community health care advocate, passed away on November 2, 2007 after a courageous battle with Leiomyosarcoma, a rare soft tissue Cancer. He was 72.

Mel cared deeply about his patients and was the first to welcome over eight thousand new East Texas babies into the World as an OB/GYN physician. As Director of the Jasper Newton Public Health Department he helped expand community health care access for East Texas' indigent, rural, and elderly citizens; organized mass immunizations programs targeting thousands of schoolchildren; and came out of retirement in 2005 to volunteer his services to hundreds of Sam Rayburn Lake's Katrina evacuees in need of health care assistance.

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1935, he is the son of the late Dr. Melvin K. Bottorff, Sr. and Elizabeth (Jim) Bottorff of Lake Village, Arkansas. His grandfather Dr. E.P. McGehee founded the Lake Village Clinic in 1912, the first health care facility in the Mississippi Delta region and Arkansas' first air conditioned hospital. His father Dr. Melvin Bottorff, Sr. also practiced at the Clinic and was Chief Physician for the Civilian Conservation Corps. in Arkansas.

Mel is preceded in death by his parents and sister Betty Sue Schwartz of New York City. He is survived by his loving wife JoAnne Bottorff of Sam Rayburn, Texas; son Brian Bottorff of Houston; daughter Beth Walker and her husband Paul, grandchildren Shea Pielsticker, Peyton Pielsticker, Lance Bottorff Langel, Jordan Walker, and Jack Walker; all of Tulsa, and sister Madelyn Warrick of McGehee, Arkansas.

Mel graduated from Lakeside High School in Lake Village in 1953 and attended Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas between 1953 - 1956 as a Pre-Med student; he worked summers exploring his love for nature with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. He attended the University of Arkansas Medical School at Little Rock between 1956 and 1960 with Externships at hospitals in Memphis and Little Rock and a Preceptorship in Camden, Arkansas. After medical school graduation his rotating internship was at Confederate Memorial Hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana where he met and married his wife JoAnne.

He served as Captain in the United States Air Force and Chief Medical Officer stationed at Seymour - Johnson A.F.B. in Goldsboro, North Carolina between 1961-1963. Continued