Dr. J.J. Magie had 15 patients on his schedule one day last week at his vision clinic in Morrilton — about average for the 87-year-old ophthalmologist.
That may not seem like many, but add up how many people he’s seen since becoming a doctor 59 years ago — including primary care and general surgery — and it’s pretty impressive.
“All my life I wanted to be a doctor. Where it came from, I don’t know,” Magie said. His last name is pronounced Muh-GEE (hard G), by the way. It’s a name that anyone who lives in Morrilton knows, or at least sees — there’s Magie Ford, the dealership he and two of his sons own, and Magie Jewelers, another son’s business — plus J.J.’s medical practice.
Magie, who lives in a converted barn in Cleveland, grew up in England in Lonoke County. He marvels at his late father, Albert, who was “a farmer, barber and a true entrepreneur. He had grocery stores and restaurants. At one time, he had 600 beehives. Can you imagine?”
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. In addition to his medical practice and interest in the Morrilton automobile dealership, Magie has rental property, an RV park in Morrilton, a business selling portable buildings and carports, and he owns farmland in Lonoke County.
Magie had five brothers, but he is the only one still living. He said anyone he knows in England calls him Jimmie John. Magie said his mother, Rose, spelled his name Jimmie after a sister of hers.
His father chastised him for driving to Scott, some 12 miles down the road from where they lived, to date Margaret. “Daddy said, ‘Why can’t you date a girl in town and not burn all that gas?” Magie recalled with a laugh. J.J. Magie and Margaret got married when he was just 19, and she was 18.
They had 10 children, although one son died at 21 months after heart surgery and another son, who never spoke or walked because of a genetic disability, died at age 13. He and Margaret, who died in 1999, were married 52 years.
Magie said he was only 17, a graduate of England High School, when he forged his father’s signature to join the
Army to get money through the G.I. Bill for his education. He enlisted in July 24, 1946, and served 18 months. He got out in December 1947.
“I one time personally saluted Gen. Douglas MacArthur. He returned the salute. For a 17-year-old kid, that was a wonderful experience,” Magie said.
He went to watch-making school after the Army and learned a lot in a short time, he said. Those skills came in handy for his career as a surgeon. “The fine details helped me with ophthalmology — you have to have a steady hand,” he said.
He said he joined the inactive reserves on the advice of his brother Cone Magie, but was drafted to Korea in 1950.
It was the death of his 21-month-old firstborn son that led to his decision to go to medical school, he said. Margaret had German measles when she was pregnant with their firstborn son, Jimmie, who was born with a heart condition. Magie was in Korea when he learned the child was going to have a heart operation. Magie got a “hardship discharge” and came home. His son had the operation but died. “I said, ‘That’s it; I’m going to medical school,’” he said.
He went to Little Rock Junior College, Hendrix College and the University of Central Arkansas to get all the subjects he needed to go to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, where he graduated in 1957. He did a one-year internship at St. Vincent’s Infirmary Medical Center.
“I never wanted to go into family practice,” he said, but he did at the urging of his family. He opened a family practice in Stuttgart and after two years he sold half his practice to make money to afford his surgery residency at UAMS. However, he owed so much in income taxes that he had to quit school.
“I ran out of money,” he said. “I was mad at the world.”
A friend suggested that he go into anesthesia, so Magie took his family and moved to Memphis to attend the University of Tennessee. “That was a mistake,” he said of his foray into anesthesia. “I didn’t like it.” He needed two more years to be a general surgeon, and he finished at St. Thomas in Nashville, Tennessee.
He moved to Morrilton in 1962 and was a family-practice doctor again. It still didn’t quite fit.
Magie asked a former medical-school classmate if the man thought Magie would make a good ophthalmologist.
“He said, ‘You’re durn right,’” Magie said, sitting in the examination room of his clinic in Morrilton.
Magie went to Harvard and got his requirements for ophthalmology in six months. When his wife asked him what he thought about the specialty, “I said, ‘I found my home,’” he said.
Magie finished his ophthalmology residency in 1970 at UAMS and moved to Conway. He opened the Conway Ophthalmology office performing eye surgeries of all kinds at Conway Regional Medical Center. “I loved it,” he said.
His practice evolved, and a satellite clinic was opened in Morrilton.
One of his sons, Dr. Steve Magie, D-Conway, followed in his footsteps, and the pair practiced together for more than 20 years. Steve Magie is a retinal specialist, as well as a state legislator, and is one of the owners in the Conway clinic, which is now Magie Smith Charton.
Steve Magie said he learned his work ethic from his parents, particularly his father. He said his dad wouldn’t allow the children to have a job during school. “He said, ‘No, you need to go to school and concentrate on making good grades.’ The day after school was out, you better have [a job], or Daddy would have you hauling bricks, or anything,” Magie said.
J.J. Magie stopped performing surgery after he had coronary artery bypass surgery in 2007, and he took about a year off. He decided to retire, and Steve Magie was going to buy the business. Just before the papers were signed, he told his son he’d reconsidered.
Steve Magie said his father made him promise that if the elder Magie isn’t performing up to par, he wants to know. Steve Magie said that’s not a problem. “He’s full of energy,” he said. “It gives him a purpose in life and he fulfills a big need in the community.”
J.J. Magie practically bounces when he walks. He was showing some of the framed, vintage medical degrees he’s picked up here and there, as well as optometry and ophthalmology medical-class photos from the early 1900s.
The advancements he’s seen in the half century since he started have been “fantastically beautiful,” he said.”I couldn’t have joined a better profession.
“They do things nothing like we did when I started to medical school,” he said. For example, cataract surgery “is a totally different process,” he said.
“The patient used to be hospitalized five or six days and had sandbags to keep their head from moving,” he said, holding his hands to his ears. “Now it takes about 15 minutes, and the patient gets up and walks home.”
Magie picked up a plastic model of an eye that was displayed on a table and explained the old procedure versus the new one.
“We used to take out the whole capsule,” he said, removing the lens of the model. “It disrupts the whole back of the eye.”
He showed how surgeons now make “a tiny tear” around the lens and use an instrument “a vibrating machine,” and “suck all this matter out.”
At 87, he said his hearing is the only disability he has, and he wears hearing aids. He has a cataract in one eye. Conway has three good surgeons, he said, and he joked that he’s going to make the doctors “draw straws” to see who operates on him.
Steve Magie said his father marches to the beat of his own drummer. “We enjoy him,” he said. “He’s a hoot.”
J.J. Magie said he’s been a workaholic all his life, but the question inevitably comes up about retirement.
“Somebody asked me the other day, ‘How long you going to work?’ I said, till I’m 95!” Magie said, laughing.
“This has been a rewarding career for me. I couldn’t have asked for a better life.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.