TMC PULSE

t m c » p u l s e | m a y 2 0 1 8 20 A s a child of the Depression who chased the crops with his family, Kenneth Mattox imag- ined he would grow up to become a missionary. "I was from a branch of the Baptist church that said going to movies and dancing and playing cards was a sin, so a lot was expected of us," Mattox said. "I thought, 'I'll be a missionary and I'll do something to help people.'" On a recent morning at Ben Taub Hospital, Mattox strode briskly through the halls of the trauma ICU, leading a group of patrons on a tour. Now 80, he is chief of staff and surgeon-in-chief of the safety-net hospital—Houston's largest—where he has worked for nearly half a century. Mattox found his mission in the middle of the Texas Medical Center. "Why do I stay here? Because medicine is pure," said Mattox, a cardiothoracic surgeon by training. "At Ben Taub, we are not going to make more money by ordering something—a drug, a test, an operation that really wasn't needed. So it's to our advantage to have a precise diagnosis and then do a precise operation and not add frills and bells and whistles that are not needed." Ben Taub Hospital is owned and operated by Harris Health System and staffed by faculty, residents and students from Baylor College of Medicine, where Mattox is a distinguished service professor. Over the course of his career, Mattox has revolutionized trauma surgery and care, worked with United States presidents and Middle Eastern royalty, and trained thousands of health care work- ers in the region. As Mattox guided the patrons past the trauma ICU to the emergency room check-in, a line of patients suddenly became visible—a seemingly endless throng of people in need. The Ginni and Richard Mithoff Trauma Center, a level I trauma center within Ben Taub Hospital, cares for 100,000 emergency patients annually. "Ken Mattox really is the heart and soul of the Mithoff Trauma Center and Ben Taub Hospital," said Richard Mithoff, a Houston attorney, Man on a Mission By Britni N. Riley KENNETH MATTOX, M.D., HAS LED TRAUMA CARE AT BEN TAUB HOSPITAL FOR NEARLY HALF A CENTURY philanthropist and Mattox's close friend. "It is his reputation that has grown the reputation of the hospital. I can't tell you how many trauma surgeons have told me that the very best training they ever received was at Ben Taub." The two men met more than 20 years ago after Mithoff was retained by a family in a high-profile case involving a police officer shooting. Mithoff raised the question of whether or not paramedics had gotten the officer to Ben Taub's trauma center in a timely manner. "It was memorable because when I met him, the first thing he said to me was, 'Mr. Mithoff, I'm so glad to finally meet you. You're going to lose this lawsuit,'" Mithoff recalled. "And he proceeded to tell me the problems with the case, which became an education for me and allowed me to educate the family and, frankly, allowed me to bring some closure to the family." In 2006, Ben Taub's trauma center was renamed in honor of Mithoff and his wife, Ginni, who had donated millions to what was then called the Harris County Hospital District. The public hospital sees the city's toughest trauma cases, from injuries sustained in car accidents to gunshot wounds. The beds and waiting rooms are always full. "I serve here," Mattox said, "because these people have no other option." Picking, singing, falling in love Kenneth Mattox was born at the height of the Great Depression in White Oak, Arkansas— population 15—in the Ozark Mountains. His father chopped cotton for 50 cents a day. When Mattox was six months old, his family piled into a two- seater car with another family and headed west to find work. They ended up in the central valley of San Joaquin, California. For six years, Mattox and his family picked fruit and chopped and picked cotton. In the fourth grade, Mattox moved with his family to El Paso, Texas, and then to Clovis, New Mexico, when Mattox was in junior high. In high school, Mattox was in a band and jammed with other musicians at a recording studio affiliated with a local radio station. Occasionally, a kid from Lubbock, Texas, would come by to play. His name was Buddy Holly. One day, Holly brought along a friend from Tupelo, Mississippi. His name was Elvis Presley. Because he was uprooted so much as a child, Mattox found solace in the church and considered becoming a minister or the next religious singing sensation. In 1956, he graduated from Clovis High School and accepted two scholarships to Wayland Baptist University in Plainview, Texas— a ministerial scholarship and a music scholarship to sing in the school's a cappella choir. "I've always known him to have a strong command in the operating room and a reputation among interns and residents as being someone you needed to pay attention to," Mithoff said. "What I learned for the first time the other night is that he sang in the choir at Wayland Baptist and that his choir director absolutely demanded attention and attention to detail. … He credits a lot of his diligence and training in surgery to that teacher." Mattox also met his future wife, June, at Wayland Baptist. During his sophomore year, the Asian flu outbreak of 1957 was causing panic on campus. "I was the school nurse at Wayland, and they had never had a school nurse before," June recalls. "It was the days of the Asiatic flu so there were a lot of sick kids on campus." (continued) Facing page: Mattox checks out a renovation project at Ben Taub Hospital. I wanted the toughest, hardest, highest road, the most complex training program I could find. That's the way I'm wired.

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