The Good Doctor Finds You Can Go Home Again : Health: She has had no trouble readjusting to small-town life. However, there has been a bit of role reversal for the lone practitioner since she left three decades ago.

Author Thomas Wolfe said you can’t go home again, but Beverly Holmes doesn’t necessarily agree.

Thirty years after she graduated from high school and left for the bright lights of the big city, Holmes, 49, returned to this southwestern Missouri farming community of 1,000 as the town’s lone doctor.

“I think part of Wolfe’s reference is that home is not what you left it and that’s why you can’t go home again, because it’s very different,” she said. “And it certainly is very different for me.”

But Holmes, who hung out her shingle on Main Street last December, said she’s had no trouble readjusting to small-town life after living in Tulsa, Okla., for three decades. She decided at age 39 to go to medical school and graduated from Oklahoma State University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1986.

“I feel really comfortable here,” Holmes said during a break between patient appointments. “It’s a nice feeling to be able to walk down the street and say hi to people and they’ll say hi back, and they know you. It’s not just a face.”

Holmes grew up eight miles away in Greenfield but attended church in Lockwood, which is sort of a family seat. Her grandfather ran a clothing store in Lockwood that’s now operated by her uncle.

“One of my greatest revelations is that the people who guided my life--the community leaders and the church leaders--now I’m guiding their medical problems. I’ve noticed a bit of role reversal here,” she said.

Holmes said that she’s surprised that her friends and relatives and others who knew her as a child would even consider coming to her for medical help.

“There must be a lot of them who think of me as this bratty little kid who was getting in trouble with their kids, causing ruckuses and soaping their windows on Halloween,” she said, laughing.

Holmes has observed many changes in the 30 years since she last lived in rural southwestern Missouri. The surrounding fields still yield bumper crops of wheat, soybeans and milo, but the local economy is more diversified with the addition of several small manufacturing plants.

Many of the changes are demographic. More women work. Folks eat out more. Fast food abounds. Families have two, three or more cars and pickup trucks, and shop farther away than they used to.

But the small-town charms--giggling children playing on the sidewalk in front of Rex’s Barbershop, the postmaster calling to a passerby that his package has arrived--live on in Lockwood.

That appeal persuaded Holmes to move back and take the place of a doctor who was retiring. Plus, she wanted to be closer to her parents, who are in their 70s. And both she and her husband, Jim Holmes, sought to get away from the crime and traffic in Tulsa.

“Every time we go back to Tulsa to visit, we all say, ‘Aren’t we glad we left this!’ ” Holmes said.

Folks in Lockwood are also glad that Holmes and her husband--who works in real estate with the doctor’s brother--returned.

Former Mayor LaRue Lemons said townspeople sleep sounder knowing they can reach Holmes 24 hours a day in case of emergency. When Lemons’ daughter became ill in the middle of the night recently, Holmes made a house call.

“We ended up taking my daughter to a Springfield hospital, but the point is, she came,” Lemons said.

The presence of a hometown doctor to handle routine exams and tests is also more convenient than having to drive 100 miles round-trip to Springfield for the same procedures, residents say.

“I think a lot of my patients enjoy not having to spend half a day traveling to get their blood pressure checked,” Holmes said.

On an average day, the doctor sees 15 to 25 patients. Many are elderly people with heart and hypertension problems, but Holmes said office visits range from cut fingers to “football helmets in the stomach. It’s a real variety of things around here.”

The Holmeses are restoring a Victorian home built in 1910 by, fittingly, a physician. She’s also helping plan a new clinic and wellness center set to open next year that will include a second physician.

After a year back home in Missouri, Holmes said she and her husband hope to spend the rest of their lives here. And she’d like to see more doctors set up practices in rural towns like Lockwood.

“I think there’s a lot here to attract doctors, and these people are just as deserving of health care as anybody is,” Holmes said. “I want people to realize that it is a fun type of work to do. It’s good for families; it’s good for physicians.”