A chance encounter 70 years ago changed Bill Sammons' life.

Sammons retired this summer after 51 years as a doctor in Ashland. Back then he was just another poor Texas kid, the youngest in a family of nine children. His dad sold moonshine on the side to make ends meet.

He was thumbing a ride to Fort Worth when a stranger stopped to give him a lift.

The man took a liking to the tall young fellow. He gave him $5, a huge sum of money at a time when people worked for a dollar a day, and told young Bill to keep in touch.

The stranger turned out to be Monroe Osborn, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma. Osborn always had wanted a son, and eventually adopted Sammons in everything but name. He made sure Sammons got an education, and supported him through college.

Sammons decided to become a doctor, but World War II interrupted his plans. He enlisted and learned to fly rather than going to medical school. On his first combat mission, he flew paratroopers into France during the invasion of Normandy. Wounded when his plane was hit, he recovered in time to fly a relief mission to U.S. troops, surrounded at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.

After the war, Sammons went to medical school in New Orleans, where he met the woman who would become his wife. Following an internship in Virginia, Bill and Peggy decided to move west, hoping to leave behind the racism they had seen across so much of the South. A letter to the Oregon Medical Association brought an invitation to work in Waldport, where he opened an office in 1951.

The rain-swept little community on the coast held no charm for the couple, and after a few years they started looking for someplace else. They chose Ashland.

"It was a nice little town," he recalled. "They had a nice college, and that nice little theater down the street where they played Shakespeare."

Ashland had seven doctors and about 5,000 residents (including the college students) when the Sammonses arrived in 1955. There was one traffic light, at Second and Main streets.

"It was not uncommon in those days to walk downtown and hear guys who were digging a ditch talking about the quality of the Hamlet performance the night before," he said.

Sammons worked every facet of medicine. He delivered babies and performed appendectomies. He repaired broken bones and checked on patients in the hospital. He even called on sick folks at home. Seeing 40 patients in a day wasn't unusual.

"We had to do the whole thing," he said. "There weren't any specialists."

The fees he charged seem implausible today. An office visit cost $5. Delivering a baby was $75; an appendectomy, $80. Setting a nasty broken leg might set you back $200.

He cared for people who had no money and people who spoke no English at a time when there were few other resources available for them.

"He would get chickens and pies in trade for services," said Polly Williams of Medford, who first met Sammons when her husband suffered a serious burn.

"We were young and we had no insurance," said Williams, now the program officer for the Carpenter Foundation. "Dr. Sammons was the only doc willing to take him, not knowing whether he'd ever get any money."

Sammons realized that migrant workers and their families weren't getting adequate health care in Southern Oregon. He worked with Jackson County officials and others to found La Clinica Azteca, which would eventually become La Clinica del Valle, now one of the largest health care providers in Southern Oregon.

"Whenever there were issues of public health, he would step up," said Hank Collins, Jackson County's director of health and human services.

"I don't think they make them like him anymore," Collins said. "I really don't. He was trained to be committed to something bigger than his patients or his pocketbook. He had a real interest in the broader health of his community."

"We used to call him 'El Doctor Angel' (The Angel Doctor)," said Williams.

She became reacquainted with Sammons when she was executive director at La Clinica. "He used to come to our clinic and teach our doctors how to do ultrasound.

"He just never stopped giving."

Much about medicine changed during Sammons' career. Science gave physicians more and better diagnostic tools, and information technology gave patients access to much of the same information that physicians had.

"The patients have totally changed," he said. "They're much more knowledgeable, more inquisitive. They question sometimes the judgment you make — which I think is good."

At the same time, many patients have become less willing to accept less than perfection from their physicians, he said.

"The litigious climate has so changed," he said. Physicians nowadays "need to be damned sure they do the right thing at the right time, or else you're hanging out in the wind."

Sammons continued to work part-time long after many of his contemporaries retired and closed his office for good only after his wife had a stroke. He said his deepest satisfaction came from the knowledge that patients "have taken me into their innermost confidence."

"Oh, my," he said. "I can't believe people do that, but they do.

"The number one thing is they have entrusted their confidence to me and their most private thoughts, knowing I'm not going to divulge that and that I'm going to do my level best to solve (their problems)."

Sammons turns 86 in September. He still ponders how the son of an itinerant farmer and bootlegger happened to meet a state supreme court judge who helped him become a doctor.

"It's the most miraculous thing that ever happened to me in my entire life," he said.