February 16, 2000
Medical missionary receives Baylor's McCall Award
___WACO--A lifetime of saving lives and saving souls earned Joann Horton Goatcher Baylor University's Abner McCall Humanitarian Award.
___Twice a medical missionary in Thailand, a physician pioneer in Texas Baptists' River Ministry and now a semi-retired doctor in Clinton, Ark., Goatcher received the award from her alma mater, where she graduated in 1952.
___"Since her earliest years in the small West Texas town of Carlsbad, Joann knew she wanted to be a missionary physician in Southeast Asia," noted Baylor classmate Betty Dilday of Southlake, who made the award presentation on the Baylor campus in Waco.
___After graduation from Baylor, Goatcher earned a degree from Southwestern MedicalSchool in Dallas. And after an internship and residency in pediatrics, she married Earl Goatcher, a hospital administrator who also sensed God's leadership to foreign missions.
RUSSELL DILDAY and his wife, Betty, greet Earl and Joann Goatcher as Mrs. Goatcher is presented Baylor's Abner McCall Humanitarian Award.
___In 1961, the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board sent them to Thailand, where they helped staff a new hospital in a remote area between Bangkok and the Cambodian border.
___"Diseases eradicated in the U.S. were still very prevalent in Thailand, and Joann had patients with diphtheria, life-threatening diarrhea, parasites of all kinds, whooping cough, polio, severe respiratory problems, cobra bites and meningitis," Dilday reported, adding, "Rabies, leprosy, tuberculosis, tetanus and goring by water buffalo claimed many patients."
___Although the people were slow to extend their trust, "scientific professional medicine combined with compassionate care quickly increased the trust level," Dilday noted.
___But "while the trust level for medical care grew rapidly, the trust level in spiritual matters came much more slowly. Adopting a new faith with personal belief in Christ as their Savior was considered by many Thais as a denial of their culture."
___Goatcher bridged that chasm by opening her home to a "family class," providing a non-threatening, culturally sensitive way to share Christ and lead people to faith.
___After nine years, the Bangkla hospital was strong and well-staffed by Christian Thai leaders, freeing the Goatchers to return to Texas so their children, Lisa and James, could complete high school and Baylor.
___They moved to Van Horn. She went into private practice, and he became the administrator of a county hospital near the Rio Grande. During this period, she also became the first medical director of River Ministry and helped establish the first 22 of more than 60 River Ministry medical clinics in Mexico along the Rio Grande.
___Later, when their children were educated, the Goatchers returned to Thailand. She was medical director of a 100-bed hospital in a refugee camp near the Thai-Cambodia border, and he fed 45,000 people daily and provided other services for four refugee camps.
___Next, she spent three years providing primary health care training to leaders of villages in Thailand, Bangladesh and India, diminishing the mortality rates in those areas.
___Then, they spent four years in Richmond, Va., where she worked at the Foreign Mission Board offices and on the staff of a center for juvenile offenders.
___In 1991, they returned to his hometown in Arkansas, where she practices medicine part time in a rural health clinic, a nursing home and a public health clinic.
___"We will probably never know the total impact of Joann's life on the world and the kingdom of God," Dilday said. "We will never know the countless numbers of lives which have been touched for spiritual and physical healing."
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