Longtime Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital Surgeon Dr. Alan Londe Retires
Dr. Londe, center, with members of the Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital surgical team.
After more than 52 years as a general and plastic surgeon, Alan Londe, MD, is turning in his scalpel. He’s not leaving medicine entirely, but the 83-year-old surgeon (he’ll turn 84 at the end of April) will no longer be in private practice at Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital, his home off and on throughout his long, illustrious career.
“I will miss the people the most,” says Dr. Londe, whose last day at the hospital was April 1 and who performed his three final surgeries just a few weeks before. “I’ll miss everyone in the operating room and the hospital — the nurses, surgical techs, anesthetists, anesthesiologists, fellow surgeons and the patients, of course. We’ve become very close after all of these years.”
Just a few who have worked by his side had this to say:
“Dr. Londe has had the same happy, calm attitude every day, and he also told the best jokes,” Verona Gregory, surgical technologist.
“I have never seen anyone who loves being a doctor as much as Dr. Londe, and his patients also love him,” Eva Bickmeyer, RN, first assistant.
Where it Began
Dr. Londe earned his undergraduate degree from Washington University and completed his medical degree at Washington University School of Medicine in 1957. He interned and completed his surgical residency at the former Jewish Hospital of St. Louis prior to going into private practice.
In 1966, he was drafted into the Air Force during the Vietnam War and was chief surgeon and deputy commander of an Air Force hospital at Hill Air Force Base in Ogden, Utah. During his time there, an officer’s wife asked Dr. Londe if he could do a new procedure at the time, breast augmentation, and so he developed his own methods for the procedure, and by the time he left the base in 1968, he had done more than 600.
Dr. Londe returned to St. Louis, where he was on staff at the former Jewish Hospital, St. Joseph’s in Kirkwood and Faith Hospital. First located on North Kingshighway, Faith Hospital would move to Creve Coeur and later become Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital (BJWCH). During this time, he was one of the founders of Parkcrest Surgery, a practice with more than 20 surgeons.
A BJWCH Institution
Dr. Londe would later start Tempo Surgical and eventually moved his practice to BJWCH in the same building where he practiced when it was Faith Hospital.
“I’ve been out here for about the last 15 years and continued doing both plastic and general surgery,” he says. “I was the first to do a laparoscopic gall bladder surgery at BJWCH. I went to San Antonio, Texas, where I trained on two pigs a day for a week; we’d take out their gall bladders and send them back to the farm alive. The biliary system of a pig is the same as a human. So, then I started doing humans.”
Dr. Londe was also the first surgeon at BJWCH to do liposuction after training in France with “one of the fathers of liposuction, Dr. Pierre Fournier.”
He also did the “first, only and last” open heart surgery at BJWCH when a patient arrived one night with a knife in his heart.
“I did one heart case and probably the only heart case ever done here, but the patient did well and left the hospital after four days,” he says.
It’s these stories that make Dr. Londe an “institution” at BJWCH, says Chris Eagon, MD, fellow surgeon and BJWCH Chief of Staff.
“He has been around longer than any other physician and has a great memory. He loves to tell stories of the old days at BJWCH, and his comments often add color and depth to the characters that lived and worked within the hospital over the years,” Dr. Eagon says. “He was chief of staff at the hospital for many years and has devoted much of his time and energy contributing to the various committees that make this hospital run.”
His contributions both in the operating room and to the hospital as a whole have not gone unnoticed.
“Dr. Londe has been instrumental in the growth and success of Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital,” says Trish Lollo, BJWCH president. “His deep commitment to patients, team members and the broader community is exceptional, and the impact of his many contributions will be felt for years to come.”
Staying Busy in Retirement
In his retirement from surgery and BJWCH, Dr. Londe plans to stay involved in medicine. For more than a year, he has been medical director at West Pine Medical in the Central West End and will continue in that role three days a week.
He will also continue one of his other passions for more than 50 years, his involvement with the Boy Scouts of America. Dr. Londe has served on the board of directors, and in 2000, a camp was named after Dr. Londe and his late son, Kevin, called the Londe Andirondack Village at S Bar F Scout Ranch in Knob Lick, Mo.
Dr. Londe is the father of three children. He has one son, Kenneth, who lives in Chicago. His daughter, Kathy Londe Palmer, who was a nurse at BJWCH, and his son, Kevin, who was an anesthesiology resident, have both passed away. He is also the grandfather of four.
Dr. Londe and his longtime fiancée, Sandy Tucker, whom he calls the “love of my life,” plan to continue their monthly travels and enjoy his home on a Missouri River bluff.
Although he knows he will miss being a surgeon, he laughs and says that at his age, it was time.
“At some point you have to stop, but I’m going to miss it,” he says. “It’s time for the younger guys to take over.”