Bill Roof

January 31, 2016
Dr. Bill Roof died January 31, 2016, just two weeks after his 91st birthday on January 17th. He operated on and cared for countless heart and lung patients from south Texas during his many years of private practice in San Antonio. Willie Reese, or Bill, Roof was immensely appreciative of his training as a heart surgeon under open heart surgery pioneers Dr. Michael Debakey and Dr. Denton Cooley. He often said he was fortunate to be in at the Baylor College of Medicine in that narrow window of time when the two brilliant surgeons were there together. At the time, open heart surgery was an entirely new field, barely a decade old, and he had opportunity to learn from those who created the modern field of cardiovascular surgery.

Bill Roof was delivered by Dr. Ball, who drove ten miles to the Roof family farmhouse outside of Cleburne in a blizzard and had to spend the night afterwards, perhaps giving the supreme example of the doctor-healer. His ninety-one years carried him from a childhood on a rural Texas farm during the Great Depression to this rapidly changing cyber-world of 2016.

Dad loved learning and amazed others with the extent of his knowledge, from sports to philosophy, investments, history, and, of course, medicine. He gave credit to Cleburne High School for inspiring him, and even went back as Grand Marshall of the Homecoming in 2002.

After high school, Dad had no money to attend college, but in 1942 an aunt loaned him the funds, so he enrolled at Texas A&M as a Civil Engineering major. In 1943, just before his eighteenth birthday, he enlisted in the Navy and was sent to Rice Institute in Houston for Officer Training. He served in the Pacific from 1944-1946, then returned to civil engineering classes at Rice. At the end of his junior year, Dad visited a biology class a friend had raved about and later, in his memoirs, called it a "life-changing moment". He later wrote that in that moment he realized that "the body is beautifully and wonderfully made, allowing precise diagnoses to be reached with logic and insight". He was thrilled with this intellectual challenge, as well as the challenge of the minute dexterity required of a surgeon. He combined his passion and skill as a surgeon with his compassion for his patients, with their physical and emotional needs. He had time to know them as more than a heart and along the way saved thousands of lives.

Perhaps as a break from the intense demands of heart surgery, or perhaps because he just loved learning, Dad became a Master Gardener for Bexar County. He briefly served as a doctor in Baptist missions in both Colombia and Ghana. He was an avid tennis player, and loved going to his ranch in Reagan Wells, near Uvalde. Dad never lost his love of learning - he travelled to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico to study Spanish one-on-one, and late in his medical career, he attended Oxford College one summer, studying English literature.

He was Dad to his children, Anne (husband Dan Russell), Bill, Stephen, Charlie (fiancée Molly Matthews), and Paul and Scott, who predeceased him; Bill to his wife Betty, who also predeceased him; Fader and Grandfather to his grand-children, Elizabeth, Danny, Harrison and Davis; Reese to his brothers; and Dr. Bill or Dr. Roof to his countless patients. Dad's last lines of his memoirs were:

Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life
At last, I've found you.
Ah! At last I know the secret of it all.

A memorial service will be at 11:00 on Friday, March 18, 2016 at Trinity Baptist Church. In lieu of flowers, please donate to Trinity Baptist Church/Missions or The Dr. Willie Roof Scholarship Fund at Cleburne ISD, 505 N. Ridgeway Suite 100, Cleburne, TX 76033.