Dr. Tom Carey, the retired McComb pediatrician who cared for thousands of local children in his long career, died Thursday at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans, where he was being treated for leukemia. He was 87.
“He’s up there whistling,” said Gidge Clayton, the longtime nurse at the McComb Children’s Clinic who worked with Carey for 40 years. Carey’s signature birdcalls as he treated his young patients were the stuff of legend among children and parents alike.
Arrangements were incomplete Friday with Hartman-Jones funeral home in charge. Family members expect services to be held next week.
McComb did not have a pediatric clinic until Carey and Dr. Shelby Smith arrived in 1971.
“On the second day that the office was open — it was in Dr. Tom Mayer’s old office in the shopping center on Georgia Avenue — I took my kids in to see him,” Clayton said. Her youngest, Steve, was just four weeks old.
“At that time, he wasn’t particularly busy, and you know he never ever met a stranger, so we sat and talked for about an hour, and I mentioned the fact that I was a nurse.
“That night he called me at home to tell me that his nurse’s husband had been killed at Camp Shelby that day, and could I come in for a day or two and help him out in the office until he could find someone to work full time.
“I told him I would need to talk to my doctor first and he said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve already talked to him.’ And that’s my Tom Carey story.”
Smith said he was a pediatrics intern in Memphis when he met Carey, who had been in general medicine but was switching to pediatrics as well.
“We had every rotation together” at three Memphis hospitals, Smith said. “So you get to be pretty good friends with your only other working doctor in training.”
Smith had grown up in Centreville and wanted to work within 50 miles of there.
“There were no pediatricians in McComb, and we just decided we would come,” he said. “I couldn’t have had a better partner. He taught me a mighty lot.”
“He was the most honest man that I’ve ever known,” Smith added. “If Tom told you something, it was always the right thing.
“He was also the hardest guy to ever change his mind about something.”
Carey had plenty of other interests. He was a longtime member of the Summit Rotary Club. He made a number of mission trips overseas. And he was always working on his house in Summit, which only in the last few years did not have a set of scaffolding somewhere beside the home.
But he may be best known for the birdcalls he used to entertain his patients.
Clayton said Carey’s birdcalls were “just something he knew how to do. He came to us with birdcalls in his head. I think I asked him one time what kind of bird it was. I don’t know what he said. He probably just whistled. You always knew when he was around because he whistled.”
Smith added, “He had those when I met him. That came from childhood, I guess. And boy, the kids loved that. If he saw a little kid, he’d make a birdcall and they would be looking for the bird.”
Carey’s wife, Vondee, died in 2018. The couple had four children, Darlene Carey, Dr. Tom Carey Jr., Chris Carey and Ellen Carey; and nine grandchildren.
Said Clayton, “He was a good man, that’s all I can say. He acted Christ-like. He never spoke ugly of anybody. He ate with sinners and tax collectors.”
