With the passing of Dr. Donald Killelea, Natchez has lost more than just a prominent citizen and physician. Killelea was a man who lived a life of full humanity, who knew what it meant to love and serve his community and fellow man. He knew the true meaning of the Golden Rule and the Hippocratic oath.

As a physician, he formed relationships with patients that in some cases lasted to the end of his life. Last year, I attended a Mardi Gras celebration at his home. After the long line of well wishers had greeted him, I sat down beside him and removed my mask. He recognized me and we had a nice conversation that ended with him telling me a humorous story of when I was an infant. I had apparently defecated while sitting in the palm of his hand!

Dr. Killelea helped create services for mentally handicapped children in Adams County and when Mississippi operated under the laws of the Jim Crow South, his practice was integrated. Killelea knew that children who were sick and suffering deserved care and compassion regardless of the color of their skin. Donald Killelea followed a higher law.

To those who knew him personally, his friendship was true and unwavering. My mother worked in his office for many years. In my teens we moved, settling in such far flung places as Wyoming and Utah. Yet each year on my mother’s birthday, a card followed by a phone call never failed to come from Dr. Killelea. My mother says her birthday coincided with Killelea’s mother, and that’s how he remembered.

He worked to bring the highest forms of Western art music and culture to Natchez, because he believed in the aesthetic development of our city and its people.

It is not enough to mourn the passing of this man. To truly honor Dr. Killelea, we should aspire to his values and work for the betterment our community and its people as he did.

Shawn Smith

Natchez resident