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Funeral services for Halford Snyder “Buddy” Whitaker, MD, 77 will be held at 11:00 a.m. Friday, November 4, 2011 at Mt. Elon Baptist Church, 1132 West Lydia Highway, Lydia, SC, with burial in the church cemetery. Dr. Richard Bailey will officiate the service and Brown-Pennington-Atkins Funeral Home is serving the family. The family will receive friends following the service. Born at the brick plant in Oliver Springs, NC, July 27, 1934 to Lorenzo Robert Whitaker and Virginia Snyder Whitaker. His next home was in West Columbia on Center Street while his father worked nearby at Guignard Brickyard. The family then moved to rural Richland country next door to the new brickyard his father built in 1938, Carolina Ceramics. Buddy attended Dentsville School and Reinhardt School in Waleska, GA. Because of the difference between high schools in GA and SC, he was accidentally moved up a grade upon his return to SC. He was then able to attend Columbia High School, but left after one year when he was accepted to USC, after completing an entrance exam at age 14. He was able to leave USC a year early with a BA degree to pursue his medical education at the University of Tennessee in Memphis, graduating in Dec. 1956. He had part time jobs in the pathology department, family practice clinic, and worked on a research grant. He presented results of this research to the American Chemical Society in SC, as he found the chemical composition of a part of the pituitary gland. He served his country by working at the Federal Reformatory for Women in Alderson, W.Va. While there, he also served as a local scoutmaster. He began his residency and finished his service time on the medical staff of the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta, GA, while beginning his training in pediatrics at the Crawford Long Hospital of Emory University and Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, GA. He then returned to Memphis and served a year at the largest private hospital in the southeast, Baptist Memorial Hospital, as the only pediatric resident. That was followed by John Gaston Hospital and LeBonheur Hospital. For more specialized training in pediatrics, he was chief resident in pediatrics for the University of Kentucky Medical School, while he also helped at the pediatric clinic for coal miners in Hazard, KY. In order to become a pediatric neurologist, Buddy then moved to Winston-Salem, NC, to study adult neurology and direct the pediatric neurology clinic, followed by a year at Harvard School of Medicine, Children's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He then became associate professor of neurology and pediatrics at the Medical College of Georgia. At Gracewood School and Hospital, he developed an evaluation center to find the causes and best treatment for people with developmental disabilities. This included research to measure native IQ from EEG responses. He then developed a second evaluation center at Greene Valley School and Hospital (now the Greene Valley Developmental Center), followed by Caswell Center in Kinston, NC. By 1970, he became one of the earliest pediatric emergency doctors in NC when he worked weekends at Wrightsville Beach Babies Hospital Emergency Room. Upon his return to TN in 1971, he switched his specialty to full-time Emergency Medicine, and also became a teaching professor of Graduate Psychology and Biomedical Engineering at UT- Knoxville. Since 1966, Buddy has worked wherever he was needed as Emergency Room Physician, Visiting Physician, Medical Director, Attending Physician, Professor, and in private family practice in Louisiana, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and most often in rural South Carolina. Surviving are his daughters and sons-in-law, Sandra W. (Randy) Stewart of Chapin, SC, Virginia W. (Paul) Milam of Greensboro, NC; brothers and sister-in-law, Jon (Debbie) Whitaker of Vero Beach, FL, Bob Whitaker of Columbia, SC; sisters and brothers-in-law, Ginger (Kershaw) Rose of Columbia, SC, Loubie (Luke) Harrington of Columbia, SC; very best friend, Lenore Casper Hursey of Hartsville, SC; Mrs. Hursey’s children, Kim, Timothy, Jayne, and their children; grandchildren, Kenneth Knapp, II, Alexander Knapp, Randall Stewart, Anne Stewart, Chris Stewart, Henson Milam, Alley Milam. He was preceded in death by his daughter, Elizabeth V. Whitaker, and his mother and father. Memorials may be made to the Darlington County Free Medical Clinic, 500 W. Carolina Ave. Hartsville, SC 29550. www.bpafuneralhome.com

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Dr. Halford "Buddy" Whitaker

July 27, 1934 - November 1, 2011