A Tradition Moves West : Two Brothers From Famous Medical Clan Open a Partnership in Orange County

The two brothers, Joseph, 36, and Chester, 34, are the very models of hard-working, high-achieving young professionals as they sit in Joseph’s spacious new home in the hills here and outline the medical partnership they will launch this year.

Normally, such a teaming, even with that sibling twist, is hardly newsworthy.

But these two orthopedic surgeons carry a family name that is far from the ordinary in the world of medicine.

For Joseph G. Mayo III and Chester W. P. Mayo are the fifth generation of physicians in the medical clan that founded the legendary Mayo Clinic of Rochester, Minn., at the turn of the century.

And when the two of them become official partners in Orange County, they will be the first Mayo brothers practicing together since the early 1930s, when their grandfather and his brother were on the Mayo Clinic staff.

The first and most illustrious Mayo brothers, of course, were the founders of the clinic--William James (“Dr. Will”) and Charles Horace (“Dr. Charlie”)--who elevated the clinic, housed in a rural Minnesota town, to world renown in the first 30 years of this century.

Joseph and Chester Mayo insist that their forthcoming partnership is a case of sibling compatibility, not one of “family legacy and footsteps.”

“Chet and I really work well together. We have very different personalities--I’m more a worrier; he’s more low-keyed--but we complement each other,” says Joseph, who set up his practice in North Orange County 14 months ago, after finishing his postgraduate surgery residency at the Rochester clinic.

But the sense of family history and their place in it, whether they like it or not, is never far from their minds.

“The Mayo name, of course, has its built-in advantages--the wonderful tradition, the instant name recognition, the high esteem. In many ways, it certainly doesn’t hurt one’s ego,” explains Chester, who will move to Orange County in July after he completes his surgery residency at the clinic.

“But it’s a double-edged sword,” Chester adds. “You also get the feeling that some people are scrutinizing you more, are expecting more. It seems we always have to try harder.”

Growing up with their famous name was at first casual and fun, the advantages of a wide-eyed boyhood spent on the family estate, Mayowood, outside Rochester.

The family patriarch then was “Grandfather Chuck”--Dr. Charlie’s son, Charles Horace Mayo--who retired from the clinic staff in 1963.

“Grandfather seemed to know everyone--famous people who visited Mayowood or went through the clinic,” recalls Chester. “I remember people like Jack Benny and Ed Sullivan dropping by the house.” Another visitor was the king of Nepal. “We had a big dinner for him,” Chester says, “and right afterward, I presented him with a symbol of farming Americana--an ear of corn.”

Ernest Hemingway, who was being treated for depression at the clinic, also visited Mayowood. “He would take walks with my family through the woods near the house,” Chester says.

Naturally, the boys would frequently visit the clinic or the clinic-affiliated Rochester hospital, St. Marys, where they were born.

By the 1960s, the Mayo Clinic was at the crest of its global fame and public acclaim--the country’s first and best-known private group-practice institution, employing about 400 staff physicians and administrators and attracting nearly 200,000 new patients yearly, from U.S. Presidents to Midwest farmers.

“We were still little kids then, so we didn’t really understand. We weren’t very impressed by it all,” Joseph says.

But even then, even for little boys, the Mayo name meant certain expectations, not only within the clan but also to much of the public.

As Joseph relates it: “I remember following my grandfather around the clinic, holding his hand. I was about 6 then. And people would smile at me, then ask, ‘Well, young man, are you going to grow up and be a doctor too?’ ”

To no one’s surprise, grandfather Chuck’s four sons were subjected to formidable pressures to follow in the footsteps of the Mayo doctors--a heritage that actually began with the founders’ father, William Worrall Mayo, who died in 1911.

But only one of the fourth-generation Mayos became a medical doctor. Grandfather Chuck’s oldest son, Charles Horace Mayo II, finished his postgraduate residency at the clinic in 1964 and went on his own to practice in Minneapolis and other areas. However, Joseph G. II, the father of Chester and Joseph III, became a specialist in animal science and a zoological curator.

“Father dropped out of (University of Minnesota) med school,” Joseph says. “So did his brother, Ned, who went on to do a lot of other things, but chiefly ranching and raising horses.” Chester adds: “We suspect there was, to some degree, a rebellious streak at play here.”

Although, Chester and Joseph say, the family pressures were not as strong by the time they were picking careers in the 1970s, they found that the medical expectations were not to be taken lightly.

“(Family pressures) weren’t really overt; usually subtle and unspoken,” Joseph remembers. “It was the whole milieu in which we grew up--not just in this family but in a community (Rochester) where boys talked of growing up to be doctors, not firemen.”

When Joseph started studies at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, he majored in philosophy and considered law as a career. In 1974, when he was living in Orange County for a spell, he attended UC Irvine, majoring in biology and physics.

Meanwhile, Chester, who also lived in Orange County in the mid-1970s, attended Laguna Beach High School. By the time he returned to Rochester and graduated from Mayo High School there, he was considering a career in agricultural science or as a history teacher.

Before long, with a certain air of inevitability about it, the brothers found themselves gravitating toward their medical heritage. In 1979, Joseph entered the Mayo Clinic’s newly established medical school. Not long afterward, Chester, a University of Minnesota graduate, entered that university’s medical school.

When each joined the postgraduate residency program in general medicine and in surgery at the clinic--Joseph in 1983, Chester in 1985--they became the first Mayo doctors to work at the clinic in 26 years. That was in 1964 when uncle Charles Horace II finished his postgrad residency.

Despite expansions and satellite clinics that have made Mayo a $900-million annual operation, the young brothers believe the clinic programs have not swerved from Drs. Will and Charlie’s founding dictum: that the primary mission is the highest of quality and personalized care for patients.

“Our clinic was the first--the mother ship--of all group practices and, we like to think, remains the best,” Joseph says.

Still, the brothers’ new venture has taken them far from the birthplace of that “mother ship.”

“California is more open, we feel, and not as insular. Back there, there’s that whole different set of expectations for anyone named Mayo,” says Joseph, who lives with his wife, Susan, a nutritionist, and their 15-month-old daughter, Catherine Louise.

Besides, adds Chester, who will be joined here by his wife, Julie, a pediatrician, and their 14-month-old son, Chester Michael, “Joseph and I have always wanted to get out on our own, to have more personal control over our lives and our practice.”

There are other Southern California attractions. Their mother, Joanne Sokolski, a prominent activist in Orange County arts, has long lived in Santa Ana. The brothers’ senior partner is Dr. Gordon Traub, a veteran orthopedic surgeon already based in North County, who has had close ties with the family for years.

As for the expanding branches of Mayo doctors, apparently it isn’t ending with Joseph G. Mayo III and Chester W.P. Mayo.

There’s first cousin Charles W. Mayo II, 31, a University of Minnesota medical school graduate, now serving as an Army base physician in Illinois. There’s Charles’ younger brother, Andrew, who’s a first-year medical student at the university school.

But this passing of the medical torch has again had its defectors.

Consider yet another younger first cousin, Ian Mayo, who is, perhaps, the most maverick of the present Mayo generation.

“Ian’s a rock musician. He’s got his own heavy-metal band right in our home region, the Twin Cities,” says Joseph.

“Ian’s really very good. He’s found a niche. He’s doing his own thing.”