Palestine High School Alumni Association

04 / 29 / 1935  –  12 / 20 / 2005

Marshall K. Dougherty, M.D., 70, of Paris, died at 3:05 a.m. Tuesday December 20, 2005 at Paris Regional Medical Center. A memorial service will be held at 10:30 a.m. Saturday December 24, 2005 at Church of the Holy Cross with Father Jim Price and Rev. Betty Clement as celebrants. Inurnment will follow in the Holy Cross columbarium. The family will be at their residence.

Dr. Dougherty was born April 29, 1935 in Palestine, a son of T. Brook and Kathrine Campbell Dougherty.  He graduated from Palestine High School as Valedictorian in 1953, then completed his studies for a B.A. degree from the University of Texas at Austin, where he graduated with honors in 1956. He was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. He entered the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, where he was a member of the Phi Chi medical fraternity. While there he was a teaching assistant, teaching freshman anatomy. He graduated in 1961, then began his internship at the Grady Memorial Hospital of Emory University in Atlanta, GA.

From 1962 to 1966 he fulfilled the requirements of residency in clinical and anatomical pathology at Baylor University Medical Center. During this time he was a part-time instructor at Baylor College of Dentistry in Dallas.

Dr. Dougherty was a Captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, and served as Chief of Pathology Services at the U.S. Darnall Army Hospital at Ft. Hood, Texas from July 1966 to July 1968, at which time he opened his private medical practice in Paris, serving for the next thirty years through the M.K. Dougherty and Associates Pathology Laboratory, an outside tissue laboratory.

He was on the active medical staff of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Health Center in Paris, where he was director of Pathology and the Clinical Laboratory from 1968 to 1998; serving two separate terms as Chief of Staff and on numerous committee appointments. He was an active medical staff member of McCuistion Regional Medical Center of Paris, where he was also Director of Pathology and the Clinical Laboratory, and served on numerous committee appointments.

Dr. Dougherty was on the consultant medical staff of East Texas Medical Center in Clarksville (formerly Red River General Hospital) from 1968 to 1998, a member of the board of directors of the Dallas Blood Center, a member and past-president of the Lamar Delta Medical Society, and a member of the Texas Medical Association, where he served 18 years on the Board of Counselors, including service as secretary, vice-chairman, and chairman, the ad hoc Committee on Medical Licensure, and ad hoc Committee of Eleven.

He was also a member of the American Medical Association and the Texas Society of Pathologists, where he was a delegate to the TSP House of Delegates, chairman of the Council on Constitution and Bylaws, Secretary, and was chosen for honorary membership in the Society for his “many contributions to medicine and pathology in Texas as well as to the Texas Society of Pathologists.” Marshall was a Fellow of the College of American Pathologists, where he served as foreman of the Texas delegation to the House of Delegates and a laboratory inspector of the Quality Assurance Program. He held membership in the Texas Medical Foundation, where he was a member of the Board of Trustees, served as Treasurer, and was a member of the Executive Committee. He was a Diplomat of the National Board of Medical Examiners, and held medical licenses in both Texas and Oklahoma. He was certified in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology by the American Board of Pathology in 1968.

Marshall was active in his community, and was a member of the Rotary Club of Paris since 1968, where he had served as president, upon numerous committees, and was named a Paul Harris Fellow by his club. He was a volunteer of the NETSEO Trails Council of the Boy Scouts of America, where he was a District Chairman and a member of the Executive Board. He served the American Cancer Society, both the Texas Division and the Lamar County unit. He was a member of the Lamar County Chamber of Commerce, serving two separate terms as a director, and as vice-president and chairman of the Public Affairs Committee. He was a member of the Chamber’s executive committee, serving as President in 1995-1996 and serving upon numerous committees, and a member of the Paris Area Arts Alliance. Dr. Dougherty was a lifelong Episcopalian, being a licensed lay reader from the age of 15.

He was a member of Church of the Holy Cross, where he was active as a lay reader until his health prevented. He has served as a Vestryman, Junior Warden, Senior Warden; as chairman of the pastoral search committee, and a chairman of the endowment trust committee. He was a member of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, through which he volunteered as a builder with Habitat for Humanity. He was a member of the Keep Paris Beautiful Committee.

He was Paris’s first full-time pathologist, faithful to his work, but even more so a devoted man to his family, taking great joy from his children and grandchildren. Upon his retirement he read to school children, until his health prevented. An avid outdoorsman, he was an enthusiastic nature photographer, having his own darkroom and printing many of his own pictures. In the early days of organ and tissue transplantation he made many presentations to encourage organ donation, which became quite real to him in later years when heart failure and complications required his own heart transplant. Marshall put up a tough fight and will be remembered by all who treated him as a trusting patient. He and his family are eternally grateful to the generous family who allowed him to receive a new heart which gave him more than five years of additional life and the opportunity to enjoy his grandchildren, including the four he otherwise might never have known.

He married Barrillon Felder in Palestine on March 16, 1963. Survivors include his wife; his children, LTC Marshall K Dougherty, Jr. and wife Tracy, of Ft. Lewis, Washington, Jean Dougherty Mueller and husband Brian, of Richardson, Michael David Dougherty and wife Wendy, of Blossom, and Susan Dougherty Brown and husband Patrick, of Norcross, GA; and grandchildren Katie and Victoria Dougherty, Ashley, Mark and Kristen Mueller, Beth Ann and Ryan Dougherty, and Logan and Madison Brown.

If desired, memorial contributions may be made to the Church of the Holy Cross Episcopal, 322 Church Street, Paris, Texas 75460; the St. Paul Medical Foundation Heart and Lung Fund, 5909 Harry Hines Blvd, Dallas, Texas 75390; or the St. Phillip’s Episcopal Church, 106 E. Crawford, Palestine, Texas 75801.

Source: Palestine Herald-Press 12-21-2005