Warren Borgquist, MD: Family, Friendship, and Rural Medicine

Dr. Warren Borgquist delivered three generations of babies in Tuolumne County as a family practice physician. From 1971 until his death in 2010, he not only attended countless births, but he also provided health care for numerous families, often placing his patients' needs front and center in uniquely personal and unconventional ways.

"We thought he was ours," said Jennifer Lebell, his stepdaughter, "until we stood on the dais at his memorial looking at over 400 people who thought the same thing." This is a memory book of stories collected during more than 100 interviews from people who thought of Warren as their own-as brother, husband, parent, grandfather, friend, colleague, and doctor.

Situated in the context of a rural medical practice, battered by external forces both social and economic, these accounts turn out to be emblematic of medicine across the country at the turn of the 21st century. But mostly, they tell the story of a self-proclaimed over-achiever, an unpretentious, kind-hearted man, who left an indelible mark on a small community.