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Dr. Neal Vinsant has come full circle with his career and path back home to LaFollette
By Charlotte Underwood
LAFOLLETTE, TN (WLAF) – Dr. George O’Neal Vinsant is a LaFollette home-grown success story influenced by the area hospital and the doctors that worked there in the 1970s. His story starts at the LaFollette Hospital in 1974 when he worked as an orderly and now, he’s come full circle and has been a physician at the local hospital for the last 12 years. His medical journey took him across the world and all the way back home. He credits several doctors with helping him along his way to becoming the surgeon he is today.
“If it weren’t for some of the docs there, I don’t know what I would be doing, they encouraged me to go into medicine and become a doctor,” Vinsant said.
Dr. Vinsant graduated from Lincoln Memorial University in 1974, and he didn’t yet know he wanted to be a physician.
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I started undergraduate school, I thought I wanted to be an engineer, but I was really and truly in party and trivia,” Vinsant said.
We caught up with Dr. Vinsant on Saturday afternoon when he stopped by for a Pool Room hot dog at the Royal Lunch & Billiards. Dr. George O’Neal Vinsant began his medical career in the 1970s working at LaFollette Hospital before going on to medical school and becoming a surgeon. He is a LaFollette native and credits early doctors at the local hospital for influencing his life.
He came back to LaFollette and got a job at the hospital when J. B Wright was the administrator and Bill Thompson was on the hospital board. Thompson was family friends with Dr. Vinsant’s family and helped Neal to get a job at the nursing home as an orderly.
“Everyone tells me that the term orderly dates me, because that term is no longer used, it is now a male nurses aid,” said Dr. Vinsant with a laugh. He worked at the nursing home and then about six months later worked down at the hospital.
According to Dr. Vinsant, “Dr. Burgin Wood, Dr. Jim Crutchfield, Dr. John Pryse and Dr. Lee Seargeant played a huge role” in his career decision and choosing to become a surgeon. He worked at the hospital for about four and a half years.
Dr. Vinsant then made it into medical school but said he “couldn’t get in here in the states”, so he went overseas.
“First, I went to Egypt, got there and realized that was a mistake. Then I went to Granada, I had been admitted and accepted down there, that was in January of 1979, and on March 13th in ’79, I had the unique experience of experiencing a communist coup. The Cubans came in there and overthrew the government. I then lived in the West Indies for about two and a half years, and then I was accepted as a third-year student at UT in Memphis,” Dr. Vinsant said.
Cala Capitan looking toward La Zenia Spain
According to him, the “Hand of God” was active in helping him get accepted.
“At that time, Dr. Robert “Bob” L. Summitt Sr. was the Dean of Medical School in Memphis, and he was from LaFollette. Dr. Jim Farris had communicated with him about me attending medical school there. I went down and interviewed and just three days before I was supposed to be on a plane for England, they called me, and I had gotten in at UT in Memphis. I graduated from there and did my surgical residency at UT.
After his medical school was completed, Dr. Vinsant has had a medical practice in Florida, as well as Greeneville, Tennessee, but he said he never thought he would get to come back to his hometown and the first hospital where he ever worked when he was young. All in all, it was a 30-year journey.
In 2012, he was ready for a move from Greeneville and “filled out some information on the website and the next thing he knew”, hospital CEO Mark Cain called him.
Dr. Neal Vinsant also spent time in Cabo Roig in Spain, he is pictured here with his son Oliver and their dog Gypsie.
“Mark gave me a phone call and on Good Friday in 2012, I came down and interviewed and next thing I knew I was down here, and I never dreamed I would get to be back here; it’s home,” Dr. Vinsant said.
Practicing at the first hospital where he ever worked in the 1970s is a unique experience for Dr. Vinsant who said he notes many changes, but the one thing that “strikes him all the time is that now, the hospital is a “no smoking zone.”
“I can remember Dr. Ron Hall and Dr. John Pryse walking down the hall smoking all the time,” Dr. Vinsant said.
According to Dr. Vinsant, Dr. Pryse “was a character” and was also one of his greatest influences and supporters.
“He was good to me, he encouraged me so much and was a big influence on my life. One thing he did, when I went to Egypt for medical school, he gave me a hundred dollar bill folded up small, he had written on it, ‘For emergency only JCP, November 1978’ and I carried that with me until 1995 when I was in Spain and my son, who was about two and a half years old and he was sick and I had to get him some medicine at the pharmacy and that’s what I broke that hundred dollar bill on,” Vinsant said.
Dr. Neal Vinsant’s medical school journey and career took him across the world. This photo is from his time in St. Geroge’s Granada in the West Indies.
Dr. Vinsant and the success of other young medical professionals have been influenced by the hospital and continue to do so as more medical students train there each year.
The hospital is now a core site for medical training for LMU students and works not on just training, but in retaining those students and getting them to work in the community. Dr. Vinsant is the director of student medical education for Tennova LaFollette.
“By having these students come here, that’s a start to getting these people to come back to LaFollette,” Vinsant said.
The future of the county directly depends on whether it has a thriving hospital and a strong health care system.
Dr. Vinsant was gone for 30 years, but returning home to LaFollette and serving the community he was “raised up in” has been “the best thing that’s happened to him and his family.”
A NOTE FROM THE GRAND ON CENTRAL: “There is so much good going on in our community, and I want to share all this good with you every Monday here on WLAF in hopes that you will start your week in a grand way making each week a Grand Week,” said Olivia Lobertini, owner of The Grand on Central.
Below, take a visit through The Grand on Central.
For bookings, email Olivia Lobertini ohlobertini03@gmail.com. Check on avails HERE. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED – 06/24/2024-6AM-PAID AD)
Dr. Vinsant is my stepdad and we are very proud of his career!
Congratulation on a job well done! Dr Neal is a very kind and thoughtful person. A great asset to our community!
I was the Supervisor at the Nursing Home when Dr. Vinsant came to work as an orderly. He was eager to learn anything he could and was always ready to assist me and the other staff. I am so proud of the wonderful Physician he has become. I was happy when he came back to LaFollette to practice.