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ALUMNI AFFAIRS
One of the great things about a liberal
arts education is the way that it allows
graduates to switch tracks, even in the
middle of a successful career. Just ask Dr.
Bruce Irwin ’72.
Irwin chose Birmingham-Southern
College because he knew he wanted to go
to medical school, and BSC, then as now,
had a great reputation for preparing and
placing students.
But after several years as a hospital
physician, Irwin saw a problem—a glut
of patients in emergency rooms—and
came up with a solution. He founded his
first urgent care clinic in Birmingham in
1982 and today’s he’s CEO of American
Family Care (AFC), a national company
with more than 160 clinics and 500
doctors caring for more than two million
patients a year. And he’s looking at even
more growth for the future, with plans to
take AFC international.
“When I opened the first office, the
medical establishment—including
physicians and hospitals—was
concerned, and some were outright
hostile,” Irwin told BSC students and
others at the 2016 Stump Lecture on
campus. “You have to think big, I mean
really big, work hard, ignore naysayers,
and believe in yourself.”
Life-changing experiences
Irwin’s strength started from within.
Born the son of a cobbler in Center
Point, Ala., Irwin spent much of his
childhood watching physicians and
nurses tend to his father, who lost both
legs in a locomotive accident. He began
shining shoes in his father’s cobbler
shop at the age of six, but dreamed of
becoming a doctor. That vision drove
him to succeed all the way through high
school and college.
“I was fortunate to get a scholarship
to BSC,” Irwin said. “My father had
recently died, and I knew my mother
and family needed help, so I also
wanted to be near home.”
When Irwin moved into North Hall, it
was the first bedroom he had ever had;
he had slept on a sofa in the living room
at home. He worked his way through
college with no time for extracurricular
activities, devoting his time to his
schoolwork as a biology major—he
cites Professor Emeritus of Biology Dr.
Dan Holliman as the most caring and
fair teacher he had—and preparing for
medical school.
“Studying and my outside work were
pretty much my life,” he said. “BSC
gave me the academic background I
needed to be accepted into the University
of Alabama School of Medicine and
to complete the program. But it also
opened my life to so many things I
cannot enumerate. I was like Mowgli
in the ‘Jungle Book’ when I entered
Birmingham-Southern. But I left the
college a well-educated, broadly oriented,
Trailblazing doctor and BSC Board member
transforms American health care delivery
by Pat Kindall