‘Gentle soul.’ Long-time Tri-Cities doctor and outdoor enthusiast dies

The doctor who opened Kennewick’s first internal medicine practice and treated patients there for 48 years has died.

Dr. Rod Coler, 98, died Friday, Jan. 6, according to the Lower Columbia Basin Audubon Society, which benefited from his passion for nature and volunteer work.

Coler said in a 1993 interview with the Tri-City Herald that “the happy people are those who maintain their vigor for life by being helpful to others within their family and community.”

It was a philosophy he lived.

“Oh, what a long and wonderful life!” a wildlife biologist posted on social media this week.

“He was such an adventurous, curious, interesting, and funny guy to be with!” posted a fellow birding enthusiast.

Coler earned his medical degree at New York Medical College. He was a resident at Portland’s Veterans Affairs Hospital in 1958 when he was asked to open a practice in Kennewick, a move from the big city to a town of 13,000.

As he discussed the possible move with his soon-to-be wife, Thelma, she told him, “You go where you’re needed. Don’t stay here in Portland,” according to a story later told at many dinner parties.

He arrived in Kennewick “with all my belongings in a cardboard box in the back seat and snow skies on top of the car,” he told the Tri-City Herald in 2007.

The town “looked pretty rustic,” he recalled.

$5 per office visit

He had been offered several months free rent at the medical complex across the street from the original Kennewick General Hospital building on Auburn Street.

“That was my first hint that it was going to be hard work,” he said in 2019.

It was the first and only medical office he occupied in the Tri-Cities. When it opened he charged patients $5 per office visit.

“In those days everybody practiced individually,” he told the Herald. “There were no clinics and no ER doctors. You took your turn.” Physicians paid their dues by signing up for ER rotations in exchange for the privilege of being able to send patients to the hospital.

The patient-doctor relationship was closer then, when there were fewer specialists, he said.

In an interview with the Hanford History Project, Coler remembered one patient who ran through the front door of the hospital, jumped into a bed and said,” Call Dr. Coler! Call Dr. Coler!”

Coler crossed the street to find a “hyper-excitable patient with a pulse rate of 160 and tremulous and pale and sweating,” he said. His diagnosis was a rare tumor of the adrenal gland, the largest seen in the state of Washington at the time, according to state records.

“He’s one of the nicest people and he has absolute interest of patients at heart,” said long-time patient Bob Fisher in 2007.

One person posting on the Audubon social media announcement of his death called him “such a gentle soul.”

Respect of Kennewick doctors

Coler earned the respect of the Tri-Cities area medical community,

He was twice named KGH chief of medical staff and served on the Kennewick General Hospital Board from 2003-05 before the hospital became part of the Trios Health system.

“Dr. Coler’s knowledge of the community, his knowledge of issues facing health care and the universal respect of the Tri-City medical community members make him the right candidate for the tough job that needs to be done,” said KGH board member Wanda Briggs, when Coler was picked to fill a vacancy on the board as it coped with an operating deficit.

In Coler’s years as a doctor the hospital grew from 30 to 101 beds, and Coler helped recruit the new doctors the community needed.

“One time I went to a medical meeting in Seattle,” he told the Herald. “As the speaker was leaving the podium I rushed out, grabbed the microphone and said, ‘Wait a minute. Don’t leave. I’m Rod Coler. I live in Kennewick, Wash., I want you to know, I need help over here.”

He and Thelma would bring recruits to the country club for dinner and then offer them free rent for a couple of months.

He began to cut back on his practice when he was about 79, taking no new patients.

But he didn’t close the practice until 2007 when he was about 82. His wife, who had served as office manager, pointed out that he was working for four months of the year just to pay his medical malpractice insurance premium.

He credited her good business sense with keeping his practice profitable for nearly half a century.

The year he closed his medical practice, Kennewick General Hospital named its new senior health center the “Rod Coler Center for Senior Health.”

Audubon, Boy Scout volunteer

Coler had served in the Air Force assigned to meteorology work during the last years of World War II, and he used that experience to leverage his way into Cornell University in New York, where he planned to study to be a forest ranger.

Although he ended up in pre-med classes, he did not lose his enthusiasm for the outdoors.

Birds, insects, geology and astronomy all fascinated him.

He advised senior citizens when he was practicing medicine at the age of 68 that they needed to do have fun and interact with others to occupy the mind. That would give them a reason to get up each morning in spite of stiff joints, he said.

The people who don’t grow old beyond their years are those who find an enthusiasm in youth and carry it through old age, he said.

Coler was involved in Boy Scouts for most of his life as an Eagle Scout and Eagle Scout adviser, a merit badge counselor and a camp doctor at Blue Mountain Scout Camp.

His love of the outdoors took him on Audubon Society field trips worldwide. He was a butterfly collector and an amateur entomologist, who had netted specimens from President Nixon’s White House rose garden.

He was a champion of the Audubon Nature Trail in Columbia Park and helped maintain it. In 2001 it was renamed the “Dr. Rodrick S. Coler Audubon Nature Trail.”

At the age of 82 he continued to ski, saying he picked his days and his slopes.

He and Thelma had four children. She preceded him in death in 2012.

This story was originally published January 10, 2023 at 12:54 PM.