Dr. Homer Nash Jr. and Dr. Alison Nash (photo by Kevin A. Roberts)
Alison Nash decided to become a doctor when she was in eighth grade, but she swore she was not going to become a pediatrician. Her father, Homer Nash Jr., was a pediatrician, her Aunt Helen was a pediatrician, and their father had been a general practitioner with a soft spot for kids, doctoring “back when the family paid you with a chicken or some vegetables.”
Alison was so determined to find some new, exotic specialty that she left her pediatrics rotation for next-to-last. A week after it started, she called her dad, exuberant. She’d found her calling. And after all that resistance, the rightness of it hit so hard it felt like her own idea.
Her granddad’s philosophy was already engraved: “The best thing you can do for your patients is get to know them, talk to them, have a true interest in their health and well-being.” Alas, he died right before her med-school graduation. She and her father practiced together for many years, and she used to envy his ease—the way he teased patients into compliance, and the little nicknames, like Hamburger or Professor, he had for the kids. His patients adored Homer Nash, and hundreds of families lived by his wisdom. He only retired—at 85—because he was flummoxed by the demands of electronic record-keeping.
“My aunt had a tougher row to hoe,” Alison says, “being a black female. But she was a force to be reckoned with.” On his deathbed, Helen’s grandfather had instructed his heirs to sell a piece of his real estate and pay tuition for “the one who wants to go to medical school.” Made supervisor of pediatrics the minute she finished her residency, she transformed the care of children at Homer G. Phillips Hospital in an era when she still had to wonder if a St. Louis restaurant would serve a black woman.
The first African American physician appointed to the attending staff of St. Louis Children’s Hospital, Helen helped develop one of the first specialized wards for premature infants. One of the first four African-American physicians on the clinical faculty of Washington University School of Medicine, she became its dean of minority affairs. A healthcare internship program at Children’s bears now her name, and “she also set up her own scholarship for city students who are in the middle of the pack,” Alison says. “Not the 4.0 students, because people would come looking for them. Just average, bright, industrious students.”
Alison has her aunt’s resolve and, now that she has “enough gray hair to be accepted,” her father’s ease and authority. She helps train Children’s Hospital residents in the demands of a community outpatient practice, mentor med students and undergraduates and even kids from the St. Louis Public Schools who are interested in medicine. As medical director of Healthy Kids Express, she sends mobile asthma and dental care, hearing and vision tests, and screenings for lead poisoning and anemia into the community. She was an early supporter of The Spot, which provides health care for couch-surfing teens. And for her patients’ sake, not her CV’s, she’s served as president of the medical staff at Children’s Hospital and community representative for the med school faculty. “There are not a lot of African-American faculty at Children’s,” she explains. “I want them to know, ‘Dr. Nash is involved. She’s not just outside; she has a stake in this.’”
Alison and her husband bought the Tandy Medical Building on Kingshighway just north of Natural Bridge, where the Nashes have practiced for decades, and renamed it the Homer E. Nash Jr. Professional Building. “Third and fourth generations are coming,” she says. “They’ll say, ‘My grandmother said, ‘You have got to take your baby to Dr. Nash.’” She smiles. “We’re not here to fuss at you or say, ‘Why did you do that?’ Just ‘What is the reason that happened?’
“You always have time,” she adds, her voice easy. “That’s why you are here. I never feel like I’m being put upon by patients, because that’s why I walk into the office every day.”
Her younger daughter manages the business side of her practice; her older daughter is study coordinator for the multiple sclerosis center at Wash. U.’s med school; and one of Alison’s sisters, Lauren Nash Ming, sits on the Scholarship Foundation Board and has served on boards for New City School, Crossroads School, Leadership St. Louis, the United Way, and the National Kidney Foundation.
If there’s any family trait, Alison says, “it’s that we are just nice people. We are welcoming; we are looking out for you; we are not thinking about ourselves. My grandfather used to talk about throwing a pebble in the pond—you never know how many people can be affected. And then he’d say, ‘If you live long enough, you might find out!’”
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