LITTLE ROCK — Dr. Walter G. “Buddy” Klugh Jr. had a “calming” demeanor, making his job of easing people into slumber a little easier, his son said.
“I’d have people that would tell me about their experiences about how secure they felt because Dr. Klugh was their anesthesiologist,” Bubba Klugh said. “He always talked about the need for bedside manner.”
Walter Klugh, of Hot Springs, died Wednesday at Mercy Hospital in Hot Springs from complications from a fall, his son said.
He was 88.
During Klugh’s medical residency at what is now St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center, he studied under the late Dr. Joseph Paul Hickey, who became a close friend and mentor.
“The most important thing he learned was never take your hand off the patient,” Bubba Klugh said. “There’s so much information in the human touch that you can gather,” aside from the monitors, which could fail.
In 1956, Walter Klugh began his work at what was then called St. Joseph’s Hospital in Hot Springs, where he stayed for the next 33 years.
“I think it fascinated him to make someone go to sleep and not feel the pain and then wake up and go onto recovery,” his son said.
Like everything in Klugh’s life, it wasn’t enough for him to merely run the anesthesiology department, his son said.
He went on to serve as the hospital’s chief of staff and helped start the hospital’s first recovery room, intensive-care unit, respiratory care department and cardiovascular program.
“He was a team player and just wanted to see the hospital get better,” Bubba Klugh said. “He was driven to always find a way to make patient care better.”
Before cell phones, Walter Klugh carried a “walkie talkie” radio device everywhere in case there was an emergency at the hospital, his son said.
“I can remember the home phone ringing in the middle of the night and he’d come out of a deep sleep and answer questions,” Bubba Klugh said. “He’d have an incredible ability to be fully alert.”
Away from the hospital, the doctor could be found flying in his airplane alongside his wife of 51 years, Marie Louise Klugh.
“It’d be a pretty day, and if he could, he’d run out to the airport and take off,” his son said. “He’s real claustrophobic ... it seems to me like he should have been trying to get out of the plane.”
Despite Klugh being “admittedly terrible” when he started playing golf, he set his mind to play in the Southern Amateur golf tournament and eventually became a scratch golfer, his son said.
“He wanted to be the best,” at everything he did, Bubba Klugh said. “To me, that kind of sums him up.”
A dedicated conservationist, Klugh was active with Ducks Unlimited, a group committed to preserving habitats of waterfowl, serving as an official in the state, nationally and at branches in Canada and Mexico.
“Buddy was always a team player, he was all about the resource,” said friend and Ducks Unlimited member, Ken Guidry. “It was important for him to work toward making that waterfowl resource viable ... for generations.”
Klugh was a quiet man, but tended to “talk a little more with his Johnnie Walker Red,” his son laughed. In line with his sense of humor, Klugh aptly named his hunting land in southeast Arkansas “If Ida.”
“As a volunteer with Ducks Unlimited, he’d go out on a duck hunt and [other members] would say, ‘If you had been there yesterday, it was really good,’” his son said. “He’d say, ‘So what you’re saying is ‘if ida’ been here yesterday, ‘ida’ had a better time.’”
In a 2003 letter used in a “Golden Album” for his alma mater, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Klugh summed up his love for his profession, but also his zest for life, his son said.
“I never looked back after retiring even though I dearly loved the practice of medicine,” Klugh wrote. “I might add, along the way, I never failed to stop and smell the roses - I enjoyed life to the fullest.”
Arkansas, Pages 12 on 01/26/2013