Stories of Consequence
Dr. Charles Frankum ’90 had just landed in Burlington, Colorado, on the Colorado-Kansas border, when an impending snowstorm the next day shut down every road in the area. Frankum, a Denver-based general surgeon who specializes in colorectal surgeries, partners with about a dozen regional hospitals serving rural communities in eastern Colorado and western Kansas to perform surgeries each week. He flies himself to appointments on his own small single-engine plane; a five-hour car ride becomes a one-hour commute in the air.
Frankum had nine surgeries scheduled the following day, and, despite the heavy snow and road closures, every single patient made it to the hospital on time for their appointments. The last patient of the day was an 87-year-old woman undergoing a routine colonoscopy. Frankum uses this story to illustrate the type of patients he treats – down-to-earth people who don’t always have access to nearby medical care. It’s the people — both his patients and his nurse and doctor colleagues at the hospitals — that he enjoys most about his job.
“I love the people I work with and work for,” Frankum says. “I love the connections you make.”
Frankum comes from a family of farmers — his grandfathers on both sides were rural farmers — yet his dad bucked tradition by becoming a general surgeon in their hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. At Washington and Lee University, Frankum majored in economics with the goal of going into the banking world. Nevertheless, his father encouraged him to take pre-medical requisites in the summers, and Frankum ended up staying an extra semester at W&L to add a bachelor’s degree in biology. After his father told him he would never have a boss if he became a doctor, Frankum’s career path was solidified, and he graduated from the University of Tennessee at Memphis College of Medicine in 1995 and completed his general surgery and colorectal surgery fellowship in Atlanta.
“My dad had a large influence on why I became a doctor,” he says.
While in Atlanta, Frankum embarked on a serendipitous bonefishing trip to the Bahamas. Striking up a conversation with a fellow fisherman at a bar, he learned that the gentleman had flown himself to the Bahamas from Iowa on his own plane. That freedom of having your pilot’s license and own plane spurred Frankum to do just that; a year later, he flew himself down to the Bahamas for another fishing trip. After moving to Denver in 2001, Frankum bought a single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza from a retired surgeon in San Francisco. At the same time, he learned of the Great Plains region’s need for doctors in remote hospitals. Combining his love of medicine and flying with that no-boss mentality, he started his solo practice of providing surgical care to rural regional hospitals, which he has continued for more than 20 years.
“I always say, ‘I have a plane rather than an office,’” he says.
On a typical workday, Frankum will wake up around 5:50 a.m., and he’s in the air by 6:30. By 8:30, he’s in the operating room. Most days, he’ll perform about six surgeries (generally focused on minimally invasive laparoscopic procedures including gallbladder removals, colonoscopies and hernia repairs) at one hospital, then fly home in time for dinner. Other days, he’ll start his work in the Central Time Zone at a Kansas hospital, which gives him time to get to a second hospital in Colorado on Mountain Standard Time before the end of the day. Because he contracts directly with the hospitals on a per-day basis, he enjoys not being beholden to insurance company restraints — “I’m not worried if a case takes me 50 minutes or five hours.”
Of the dozen hospitals he serves, some he has been visiting for decades and others he works with for a few years to fill service gaps, often due to retiring doctors. Although 20% of U.S. residents live in rural areas, only 10% of general surgeons practice there. Before he retires (no time soon!), Frankum hopes to find someone who will step into his shoes — and pilot’s seat.
“What I love about my job is I can sense I’m a cog in the wheel of these small hospitals … that you make a difference,” Frankum says.
Having his pilot’s license and owning his own plane (now a six-seater Socata TBM 850) also easily opens the door to long weekends to visit friends and family and to pursue his hobbies of elk hunting, spearfishing and fly-fishing in various locales (South Padre Island, Texas, is a favorite getaway for his family: wife, Kristy, and three sons, Davis, Charlie and Carter). In fact, before his 35th W&L class reunion in May, Frankum stopped in Memphis to pick up classmate Roger Fakes ’90 before landing at the Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport in Weyers Cave, Virginia. After the reunion, Frankum flew on to Destin, Florida, for some fishing and then back to Memphis for Mother’s Day.
“I’ve flown to Canada, the Caribbean, the Cayman Islands, Mexico,” he says. “You’d be amazed in what you can do with three days off. Flying your own plane is like a time machine.”
Although Frankum never had him as a professor at W&L, one of the close connections he made was with professor of anthropology emeritus John McDaniel. It was McDaniel who introduced Frankum to fly-fishing, and Frankum takes a group of his classmates to visit McDaniel in Idaho every June. Frankum is still close with his Sigma Alpha Epsilon pledge brothers as well as a core group of friends from Washington and Lee. As with his medical practice, it’s the genuine people and lasting relationships he made at W&L that mean the most to him.
“I was friends with the guys who worked at W&L as well as with the professors — it was more of a vertical friendship arrangement, like in life,” Frankum says. “The best thing about coming back to reunions is reconnecting with folks. I love seeing guys I don’t see regularly.”