An old Army doc departed his post last month. His impact on public health has been massive
David Bales likes to talk. He has stories.
A former Army doctor at Madigan Army Medical Center, the military sent Bales and his family across the globe. When young men his age were heading to Vietnam, Bales gravitated toward public health and ended up in Saudi Arabia, serving as a medical officer for a special forces unit.
Bales later spent a year in Korea. He spent a few more as a ninth infantry division surgeon. Along the way, he earned a master’s degree at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and joined a team from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research working in Kenya, near the Ugandan border.
It’s easy to get Bales going, I learned this week during an engaging conversation with the recently retired medical director of the Pierce County Medical Reserve Corps (MRC).
What’s more difficult?
Getting Bales to reveal what drives him — let alone acknowledge his accomplishments, impact in Pierce County and the lives he’s touched the world over.
“My basic thing was to be able to help in the event of emergencies,” the 78-year-old, who founded the Pierce County MRC nearly 20 years ago, told me by phone last week from his home in Gig Harbor, deflecting the superlatives others had offered on his behalf.
“I’m still working on the rationale about why I spent a career over the last 50 years doing stuff like this,” he added, the family dog, Honey Bear, howling in the background.
“I’m really kind of searching for that answer, to be honest.”
Superheroes have origin stories. Like most mortals, Bales’ childhood — and a complicated relationship with a parent — shaped the person he became, he later told me.
He can’t fly or bend steel. It doesn’t matter. Bales’ career speaks for itself, according to Gabbie Hubbard, program manager of the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department’s public health emergency preparedness department.
“(Bales) was always there. He was always in the background — constantly reliable,” said Hubbard, who arrived in Pierce County as part of the Americorps VISTA program six years ago and never left.
“It’s really easy to take him for granted,” added Hubbard, who crossed paths with Bales and volunteered with the Pierce County MRC shortly thereafter.
“I know, in my heart and logically, that the work he has done has saved people,” she told me.
Bales officially resigned from his post on the Pierce County MRC board of directors last month.
Creating the Pierce County MRC
It was an experience Bales had volunteering in New Orleans, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, that inspired him to create the Pierce County Medical Reserve Corp, he says.
Bales spent long days inside the Baton Rouge convention center treating patients displaced and battered by the catastrophic storm, he recalled. His wife of decades, who specializes in working with survivors of trauma, was there, too, volunteering alongside him.
Upon the couple’s return to the Pacific Northwest — a place they fell in love with after Bales was assigned to an internal medicine residency at Madigan in the 1970s — the old army doc was determined to help ensure Pierce County would be prepared when disaster struck.
Federally, George W. Bush is credited with launching the Medical Reserve Corps. In his 2002 State of the Union address, the 43rd president issued a call to action that spurred the creation of a national network of volunteer medical providers, organized locally in communities across the nation.
In Pierce County, it was Bales who answered the call. He founded the local chapter of the MRC in 2006.
The volunteer emergency response organization was originally designed to make sure a team of qualified doctors and nurses are at the ready should a natural or man-made disaster hit.
In recent years — particularly during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when the nonprofit helped to vaccinate thousands of Pierce County residents, including those most difficult to reach — the organization has gone above and beyond, Hubbard indicated.
“Having volunteers and clinicians ready to respond when the health department really needs people to serve the community — like during COVID — I mean, that’s essential,” Hubbard said.
Jan Runbeck, a retired registered nurse and long-time MRC volunteer, agrees.
Runbeck pointed to how the nonprofit jumped into action during the H1N1 flu outbreak to distribute vaccines as an example.
MRC volunteers also provided critical care to the vulnerable after Tacoma declared homelessness an emergency in 2017 and regularly staff free community foot clinics to unhoused residents of Pierce County, she indicated.
“It makes me teary-eyed just to think about Dr. Bales retiring, but I get it. I understand,” said Runbeck, recalling the early mornings she spent preparing with other MRC volunteers to staff free vaccination clinics at local schools.
“He believes in the greater good. He believes in the role of medicine and healthcare improving lives,” Runbeck said of Bales.
“Most of all, he believes in systems — and preparation.”
Strict theology meets reality
We’d been talking for 45 minutes before Bales, now a month into full-fledged retirement, got to the root of the matter.
He’d credited others. He’d downplayed his feats. He’d attempted to change the subject, politely, assisted by the smooth Arkansas accent he still carries from youth.
Finally, he provided a glimpse behind the curtain.
If Bales had to diagnose it — something he’s spent plenty of time trying to do since becoming a full-fledged retiree, he acknowledged — he would trace his moral compass and interest in medicine back to his father, he said.
Bales’ dad — James David Bales Sr. — was a controversial and prolific bible professor at a small, conservative Christian college in the south, he explained.
Bales Sr. is credited with authoring more than 70 books, perhaps best known for railing against the threat of communism.
His son spent a childhood listening to his lectures and fierce theological debates, absorbing a message rooted in humanity squeezed through a rigid, conservative Christian lens, he said. It had an impact.
As Bales traveled the world, engaged in military operations responding to public health emergencies across Europe, Africa and Asia, the strict tenets of his religious upbringing were quickly contradicted by what he saw and experienced firsthand.
Ultimately, Bales chose to hang onto Christianity’s compassion and ditch the dogma, he explained, describing public health was an obvious calling.
“I was raised in an environment of Christianity and wanting to help, but as I saw the different religions around the world, I felt like we could say more by what we did for people than by arguing about our faith,” Bales said.
“If you say you love people, you’re going to behave a certain way,” he told me.
“That’s how I’ve tried to live.”
Big shoes to fill
Last week, Hubbard admitted she was sad.
Now 27, she arrived in Pierce County six years ago fresh out of college — and full of idealism.
In Bales, Hubbard found a willing public health partner, and a role model whose lessons she’ll carry with her forever.
Hubbard knows nothing lasts forever. The old Army doc who became a mentor deserves to saunter into the sunset, she acknowledged
Still, none of it makes Bales’ retirement any easier. Bales’ shoes will be difficult to fill, she said.
“He set an example of selfless servant leadership. … There are a lot of lessons to take from the work he did, lessons people in my generation can apply to how we serve our own communities,” Hubbard told me.
“He absolutely deserves to be recognized and honored for the work that he’s done — for decades,” Hubbard added.
“I know he didn’t do it for the recognition. I think saving lives is what motivates him”
This story was originally published March 19, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
