It was the fall of 1980, and as a nervous 17 year old I journey to North East Oregon to the small town of La Grande to play baseball for the college team. After saying goodbye to my folks who dropped me off at the dorm where I lived that year, I awaited with a quesy stomach as my dorm roomate had not arrived yet. While waiting downstairs in the lobby, I struck up a conversation with a real personable guy from McCall Idaho, who was also staying in the dorms that year and also on the baseball team. This was when I first met Tim. Even as an 18 year old, it was obvious that Tim was confident. Quiet and secure, not cocky or boastful. Just confident.It turned out that my roomate was also a great guy from Boise, and along with a few others we had quite the freshman year, filled with fun and frivoility, and a liveliness that perhaps only young men away from home for the 1st time can truly appreciate! Tim drove an old white beat up pickup truck, and that was his baby. He often wore a cowboy hat and a denim jeans jacket too. The guys on the baseball team early on tagged Tim with the nickname "Joey", as his long curly hair and freckled face reminded us of the cartoon character from the comic strip "Dennis the Menace". After a couple of years of baseball, Tim decided to quit playing ball, and focus in on his studies. Although that year he lived in a large old house off campus with a bunch of us baseball guys, Tim made sure to have his room away from the hubbub of the populace, for he was quite focused on what he wanted to do,and that was to become a veterinarian! Many a social gathering was passed on if it meant compromising his dreams and goals. We all learned to respect him a great deal for that. Although many may not know this, Tim was a superior athlete. He had good speed and was deceptively strong. One day there was a gathering at someones house where some very well built fella was challenging everyone to arm wrestling. The big guy was whoopin everyone hands down, and boasting louder and louder all the while. Finally, Timmy, who had been quietly watching with a little grin on his face, stepped in, and said, "now it's my turn." Now understand, the big guy outweighed Tim by at least 40 lbs, maybe more. The whole room was shocked when Tim slammed him down in about 2 seconds! Thinking it was a fluke, the big boy (now visibly angry) challenged Tim again. Bang! Same result!! An instant level of respect was earned that day by the "Kid from McCall".

I didn't really see much of Tim after my Junior year. I took some time away from school before going back to graduate, and Tim began doing some schooling at Oregon State, Washington State, and somewhere else. Some of us heard that later on he had established a practice in Jackson Hole, and we thought, yep, that's where Timmy should be. It comes as no suprise to me as I read this article and that , that Tim was a good family man. He always had compassion for others, and looked for the good in every situation. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that it was going into that junior year that Tim talked about his faith, and giving his life to the Lord. I know that as I write this he is at home, with the King. Truly, Heaven's gain is our loss. I pray for his family to be comforted at this time. There will come a day when we will all gather together again, and our tears will be wiped away..

See you then, Joey-

DC

On a Sunday morning in early September, I was hunting grouse with Sonja and Bailey, my wife and black lab, respectively.  We were about a mile up an old Forest Service Road when Bailey flushed a grouse on the steep hillside above the track.  Bailey began screaming in pain and I could see her convulsing in the bushes.  I thought she had caught her foot in a leg-hold trap for coyotes, and was trying to pull free.  I dropped my shotgun and ran to her.  She wasn’t caught in a trap, but blood was flowing down her leg and I figured she had broken it badly.  I picked her up and carried her down to the track, and my wife started crying.  Then I saw the blood spurting out of her chest.  She had impaled herself on a stick coming off of an old deadfall.  I was covered with blood and I thought Bailey would die right there.  My wife ran down the track to try to bring our truck up, crying all the way, while I laid Bailey on the ground and put pressure on the hole in her chest to try to stop the bleeding.  Sonja got the truck up to us in about 20 minutes, I laid Bailey in the back, and continued to put pressure on the wound while we drove to a place where could use a phone, and get whichever vet was on call that Sunday.  It was Tim Gwilliam, and he said he would meet us at his clinic in 15 minutes.

To make a long story and one of the worst days of my life short, Tim saved Bailey’s life.  The bleeding turned out not to be the biggest problem.  The dog had a double pneumo-thorax, or sucking chest wound so centrally located that it could collapse both lungs.  Tim said if she had run around for 5 minutes after the accident, her lungs would have collapsed and she would have died.  Luckily, by trying to stop the bleeding, we had kept air from collapsing her lungs.  Bailey’s lungs did collapse at the clinic while Tim was running tests.  He had to insert a huge syringe into both sides of her back and suck out air so her lungs could reflate, while I kept the hole closed and my wife held an oxygen mask over Bailey’s face.  Once she was stable, he operated and successfully closed the hole.  Because he was alone with his technician, Miranda, I asked if we could help.  Tim replied, “No, Miranda and I are a good team.”  And they were.

Over the next few months, I felt like Tim and I became true friends.  We talked about elk hunting every time I was in the clinic.  We hunted the same country, I on foot and he on horse.  He was keen to show me more of the country from the back of a horse and we make plans to hunt together in 2008.  The last time I stopped by the clinic, Tim told me about the two elk that he and Roslyn killed in our hunting area.  He was so proud of Roslyn.  Tim Gwilliam was a talented surgeon, a compassionate vet, and a good man.

I’ve only ever known one real cowboy since I’ve moved out West.  There are so many who dress themselves up in the tight jeans, the hat, the boots.  So many work on a dude ranch for a summer, mucking stalls, even learning to rope as a side show trick for their friends back home.  A few of them might even ride well.  One or two might learn how to handle a cow.  But Dr. Tim Gwilliam is the only real cowboy I’ve ever known to actually live up to the clothes and the name.  Cutting his own firewood, riding horseback out into the mountains to bring home an elk as meat for the table, wrestling with every kind of farm and ranch animal to keep them healthy and ready to do their job, riding, roping, putting those boots to real use in the mud and dust of a hard rugged life.

I met Dr. Tim at some point shortly after moving to Jackson the first time.  I’m not sure about the details, but when I think back, my first images of him were from a few pews back in church.  He would be there in his jeans and button down shirt tucked in, a few wisps of gray in his hair, thinning on top, and standing with a kind of jaunty pride next to, not one, but a whole slew of the most strikingly beautiful women in church.  I imagine that his wife Catherine and his daughters, six at that time, were the cause of both his pride and that salt and pepper hair.  I could never look at them all without thinking what a handful those gorgeous girls might be, each one looking a year or two older than her age, and yet what a lucky man Dr. Tim was to have such a strong and beautiful family.

When I left Jackson after a couple of months, I left with a promised job offer if I were ever to return, working in Dr. Tim’s veterinary clinic as a vet tech, complete with on-the-job training.  Since being a vet myself had always been one of my childhood dreams, and since as a recent college graduate I was engrossed in the task of realizing just such dreams, I had a feeling I might be taking the Gwilliams family up on that offer.

I did return within the year and found the job waiting.  I think on my second or third day I learned that splitting firewood was designated as vet tech territory.  Dr. Tim showed me the axe, the pile of wood, the splitting stump, and asked if I’d ever done this before.  As an English major from the South I couldn’t recall swinging an axe in my past.  It’s not too hard, he said, his girls could do it so he was sure I could too.  That is the first of many times he reminded me of my own dad, believing in his daughters, believing in me, never doubting for a second that we could tackle anything and come out on top, stronger and smarter for trying.

I will never forget my sojourn as a vet tech for Dr. Tim, the cowboy vet.  It was a wild job.  Dr. Tim had me holding the necks of llamas while he filed down sharp teeth, wrestling with ferocious cats who were not interested in visiting the vet, crying over elderly dogs who were ready to close their eyes, tromping through calf-deep mud to retrieve blow darts that had missed the feral donkeys he was trying to sedate for treatment (true story!).  He loved that blow-dart gun!  In fact, he loved it all: the animals, helping, healing, hard work.  But, despite the time I spent working for him, I will always see that image of him in the Church, next to his beautiful wife, his gorgeous daughters, closest to his true loves.