Ex-cowboy founded charity for poor in US
Cowboy, TV presenter, charity founder b April 21, 1936 d August 29, 2018
When he was a teenager Stan Brock, who has died aged 82, urgently needed medical attention after being thrown from a wild horse in British Guiana.
Had he been an Apollo astronaut needing treatment on the moon, he later mused, he would have been back on Earth within three days. Among the Wapishana people in the remote savannah of South America, there was unwelcome news. ‘‘They told me I was 26 days away from the nearest doctor,’’ he said last year.
He remained troubled about the inaccessibility of healthcare in much of the world, whether because of distance or cost. In 1985 he sold most of his possessions and set up Remote Area Medical (RAM), a non-profit American volunteer corps that takes emergency help to places hit by disaster.
Increasingly, its services are called upon in the United States, where large numbers of people lacking health insurance turn up to its clinics with throbbing teeth, failing eyes and wheezing lungs.
RAM uses donated aircraft, a fleet of trucks and thousands of volunteers to deliver its medical care. When he was told that licensing laws meant medical practitioners could not legally work across state boundaries, he campaigned successfully to get the law changed. ‘‘It’s a major impediment to us when we’ve got states that do not allow it,’’ he said.
Vast convention centres or sports arenas are transformed into field hospitals, where military veterans, the homeless, pensioners and victims of the gig economy such as Uber drivers queue for basic healthcare, including eye examinations, dental treatment, mammograms, cervical smear tests and chest X-rays. No documents are needed, no questions are asked and no payment is required.
During one clinic in 2011, Brock described how 39 dentists were roaming from chair to chair in a school gym, doing consultations, cleanings, fillings, extractions and other routine work. ‘‘About 700 of our patients today wanted to see the dentist,’’ he said. ‘‘And more than 400 wanted to see the eye doctor.’’
For many years RAM’s headquarters was a former school that Brock leased from the city of Knoxville, Tennessee, for US$1 a year. It was funded through donations and relied almost entirely on volunteers. ‘‘People call [RAM] a BandAid operation [and] there’s some validity to that,’’ Brock said.‘‘But when we see a patient who has to have all their teeth taken out, or they learn they have oral cancer, or they didn’t know they had diabetes – well, that’s life-changing.’’
Stanley Edmunde Brock was born in Preston, northwest England, in 1936, and had an elder brother, Peter, who lives in New Zealand. He dreamed of joining the navy, but dropped out of school at 16 and sailed to Georgetown, the capital of British Guiana (now Guyana), where his father was a colonial administrator. On the boat over he heard tales of the rainforest from a ‘‘crusty old settler’’, and on his arrival found work at a ranch on the Brazilian frontier.
For the next 15 years he lived as a vaquero, or cowboy, with the Wapishana people, sleeping in a hammock in a mud hut and learning to ride wild horses and lasso cattle. He even learnt the Wapishani language. ‘‘I still dream in Wapishani,’’ he told an interviewer in 1976.
On one sojourn into the jungle he discovered a previously unknown species of bat, which scientists named Vampyressa brocki in his honour.
He wrote of his experiences for magazines such as Outdoor Life and Reader’s Digest, and in 1968 was invited to take part in the NBC TV show Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. He became co-host, and at its height, the show drew more than 32 million viewers a week across the US.
On the back of the programme he travelled the world, combining TV appearances with work for zoos and wildlife parks. One zoo led to another and by the 1980s he was in Knoxville, where he set up RAM.
The charity’s earliest work was overseas, but Brock became increasingly aware that many people in the US also needed healthcare. Even in more affluent areas he would find thousands of people without adequate medical insurance.
Part James Bond, part Mahatma Gandhi, Brock ate a strict vegetarian diet of porridge, fruit, rice and beans. He drew no salary, had no bank account and slept on a mat by his desk, rising at 4am to do 600 sit-ups before going for a bike ride or a run. He would squat while talking, adding: ‘‘Sitting isn’t good for you.’’
At some point there had been a 12-year marriage, but none of his many interviewers managed to elicit much detail, other than that he had no children. His main companion was a blind stray dog named Rambeau. – The Times