A longtime Lompoc OBGYN will start off the New Year as a retired physician after more than six decades of medical practice.
Dr. W. Blake Jamison was recently honored by Lompoc Valley Medical Center for his work. He was presented a plaque for his “outstanding obstetrical and gynecological services provided to the Lompoc community and Lompoc Valley Medical Center for 64 years.”
The recognition came just hours after the 95-year-old assisted with one of his final cesarean section deliveries at the hospital.
Dr. Jamison says he first became interested in medicine at the age of 16 when his family doctor took him into the OR. He says he knew he wanted to focus on some type of a happy specialty.
“OBGYN was a very happy specialty for me for a long time,” Dr. Jamison told KSBY. “It's very demanding, but the results are always exciting and there's nothing that I think that compares with delivering a baby.”
He says he worked for so long because he loved what he did and enjoyed that his patients were friendly and many had the same medical needs.
Fellow OBGYNs recall their time working with Dr. Jamison.
“He’s an excellent surgeon,” Dr. Rod Huss said in a hospital press release. “He’s the epitome of a perfect assistant. He always knows what you’re going to do and he’s right there with you. This morning when we were halfway through a case, he said, ‘I love doing this.’ He really does love being in the operating room.”
“He has such a positive attitude,” Dr. Lloyd Trujillo said in the release, while adding that he would oftentimes call Dr. Jamison, nicknamed “Bud,” for assistance with a middle-of-the night delivery and he’d always be there waiting. “He’s so collegial, generous and helpful. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve counted on him and you were there, Bud.”
Dr. Jamison’s late wife was also a doctor, working in private practice and as a physician in the hospital’s ER and at Vandenberg Air Force Base.
The hospital states that Dr. Karin Jamison at one point stepped in for her husband after he was diagnosed with mumps, delivering around 40 babies while he was out, while still working at her own practice.
The couple met at USC Medical School.
Dr. Jamison tells KSBY he came to town in 1960 when Lompoc was just beginning to expand, adding that with no other physicians in town, the patients all came to him.
"They had half days at elementary schools because there wasn’t enough room for all the youngsters to be in school all day long," he said, adding that housing was hard to come by as well. He first lived in a parsonage before being able to move elsewhere.
As for his time working in Lompoc, “The community was wonderful in accepting me as part of the Lompoc," he said. "The people that were the leaders of the community, in terms of medicine, for a while when I was all by myself, there was a great deal of respect for the decisions that I wanted to make and the comments that I made about the community. People listened a little bit to me, they don’t do that anymore," he laughed.
His last official day of work is Dec. 31.
