Dr. Walt Hollow:
A Pioneer on the Frontlines of Native American Medicine

By Miles White
Tribal Connections

Seemingly small events can change the course of a life forever. Dr. Walt Hollow remembers two things that set him on the path of becoming a healer. The first was when he was a child and his grandfather would take him along when it was time for the elder man to visit the Indian Health Service for medical treatment. Thinking back, Dr. Hollow recalls how his grandfather put the thought in his head that he could become a doctor.

"Many times he would come out from the visit with a look of frustration on his face," Dr. Hollow recalls of his grandfather, "and he was frustrated because he was not understanding what the doctor was telling him his health problems were. He used to like to reach over from the driver's seat and grab my knee and tickle my knee. And so I can remember him one day after he'd had a visit and being frustrated. He reached over and said, 'Why don't you go into medicine because I know you'd take really good care of me.' And so, that's the first time the light bulb came on, that maybe a career in medicine and health was something that I should look into."

The second event that would alter his life occurred when his father moved the family off of the Montana Indian reservation where they lived, to the small Eastern Washington town of Wenatchee. His father had fought in WWII and gone to school on the G.I. Bill. There was nothing his father could do with a C.P.A. on the reservation, so he had to move in order to make a living. The move was fortuitous, because it gave the 13-year-old boy a chance at a better education.

"That's where I started, basically, eighth grade," recalls Dr. Hollow, somewhat wistfully. "And when I got to tenth grade, a high school biology teacher could see that I was very interested in biology. I would stay after school looking through the microscope doing laboratory experiments. And she took me under her arm, and she said, 'You know, I think if you like science, I can help teach you science. You can be my laboratory assistant. You can mix up all my chemicals and solutions. And I'll give you some extra tutoring. Well, I got straight 'A's from her and it was really her nurturing my interest in science that helped me stay on the path to medicine. And so, by the time I finished high school, I had taken biology, chemistry, and physics and mathematics up through calculus. I was prepared then to go to college. And so I came to the University of Washington."