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of the interview. “The hospital, which had been built about ten years earlier, was a great facility and one of the best around.” Dr. Bolton felt very good about the move to Picayune, however, it was not a perfect scenario as he would soon learn. “When I started practicing medicine in Picayune, I was one of nine general practitioners, and in about nine months, that number grew to twelve in a very short period of time. I didn’t know I was coming into such a big group. It was tough getting started with so many other doctors,” Bolton stated. Office visits were three dollars and emergency room visits were four dollars when Dr. Bolton came to work in Picayune. “It didn’t take people long to figure out they could get medical treatment quicker by showing up at the emergency room, and we (doctors) would go over to the hospital to see them.” With this setup in place and the absence of a thriv- ing population, it took a long time to establish a med- ical practice in Picayune at the time. But before he was able to get his practice established and stabi- lized, Dr. Bolton had decided he might have to leave Picayune because he was not making enough money to cover expenses, but fate intervened. A young girl was involved in a real bad vehicle acci- dent. She was not wearing a seat belt and her face had received extensive damage included several, terrible facial lacerations on her face due to the im- pact of her being thrown forward into the windshield of the vehicle. Dr. Bolton was on the ER duty that night. When the young lady arrived at the hospital, Dr. Bolton told the mother of the young lady that we should put her in an ambulance and send her to a plastic surgeon in New Orleans. But, the mother, who was a nurse at the hospital, thought otherwise. “No, Dr. Bolton. I want you to do it. I’ve seen you do work here at the hospital, and I want you to do it.” Dr. Bolton worked on the young lady through the night and things turned out well at that time for the young lady. He said that later in her life, the young lady had to have a procedure performed to one of the scars, but overall, the results were very positive from his work on her that night of the accident. Weeks later, Dr. Bolton was talking to the nurse with whom he had become good friends with through conversation. He told her he had come to the point he was going to have to leave Picayune, even though he really liked the people and the community, because he just couldn’t make ends meet financially for his family. The nurse, upon hearing this from Dr. Bolton, told him “just hold on, and don’t do that. Let me see what I can do.” At the time, the nurse was dating the man who was the construction manager for the work that was un- derway at the Mississippi Test Facility (MTF is now Stennis Space Center), which was to be the home of the Apollo space mission engines. The nurse talked to her boyfriend and he began to send his employees, who had work related accidents at MTF, to Dr. Bolton for medical treatment. The re- sult of this had Bolton seeing on average about ten patients per day. This medical care he provided, the interactions he had with these patients, and the word of mouth about his expertise soon led to Dr. Bolton 18 SOUTHERN SENIOR MAGAZINE | Winter 2022