St. Charles Parish native Dr. Robert C. Menezes, Jr. began his career locally in 1973 as a sand blaster and painter but took an unusual career detour into the medical field six years later. The story of his career is fascinating – he would eventually travel to the East Coast, becoming a Tufts University associate professor of medicine and later a renowned internal medicine physician and senior partner in a sizable New York medical facility. For what is probably the fourth act of his career – serving a rural community in Southwest Virginia – Menezes was recently awarded Physician of the Year by Twin County Regional Hospital in Hillsville, Va.
Menezes, now 68, was raised in St. Charles Parish, beginning his education with Luling Elementary School and graduating Hahnville High in 1973. His father Robert C. Menezes, Sr. was the principal of Hahnville High from 1968 to 1975, and was still principal when he graduated, which made high school a little more challenging.
“It was very hard…I wanted to grow long hair, he didn’t want me to have long hair,” Menezes chuckled. “He wanted me to play football – he had been the football coach there from 1954 to 1968. It was kind of hard being the principal’s son, but I got through it.”
After high school, Menezes became a sand blaster and painter, eventually starting and running his own commercial sandblasting and painting firm in Morgan City. His father died from colon cancer at the early age of 47 in 1975, stirring something inside Menezes to eventually pursue a career in medicine. He sold his business in 1979 and entered LSU, graduating a few years later in 1983.
“When I graduated, I went to New England Medical Center at Tufts University in Boston,” Menezes said. “I did my internship and residency in internal medicine at Tufts.”
Menezes stayed on at Tufts University after finishing his residency in 1990, practicing medicine there as an internist, and also joining the Tufts Medical School Faculty as associate professor.
In 1995 one of his former students, an oncologist, convinced him to join a practice in upstate Middleton, New York. His new employer, later named Crystal Run Health Care, added Menezes as its first internist and its fifth physician, the early beginnings of what would later become a large multispecialty facility. By the time he was ready move on and try something new 20 years later, the firm he worked for as a senior partner had grown from five physicians to over 460 health care providers in numerous medical specialties.
When he chose to leave Crystal Run he was 60 years old and not quite ready to fully retire, so Menezes decided to dedicate the remainder of his career to a rural location that would benefit from his experience and skills. Both he and his wife Cheryl, now a retired nurse practitioner also from St. Charles Parish, moved in 2015 closer to a relative who was now living in Hillsville, a small town in Southwestern Virginia. It was there in Hillsville that he began working as an internist for a local community hospital called Twin County Regional Health Care.
“We’re in the Appalachian Mountains; it’s kind of a [lower socioeconomic] region,” Menezes explained. “One of the first things I had to do was learn how to practice a wide variety of medicine again.”
Being a rural area, the closest place for most specialist doctors was two hours away. This meant Hillsville patients needed local doctors that had knowledge of many different disciplines of medicine, since traveling so far was not practical for most patients in need of medical care.
“It was a little bit of a challenge at first, but it got to be fun,” Menezes said. “I enjoy doing it, and I was the only internist in Hillsville.”
Menezes eventually joined the Twin County Regional Hospital’s board and its medical executive committee, while still practicing medicine and seeing patients. This year the hospital gave its first Physician of the Year Award, awarding it to Dr. Menezes for his outstanding service to the local community in Hillsville.
“I want people to live the best quality of life they can,” Menezes said of his why he loves practicing medicine. “When I see that they are improving their health, that just means the world to me, when you get a patient to buy into a program that keeps them healthy.”
The St. Charles Parish native said he is looking forward to retiring within the next couple of years, when he plans to travel more. He and his wife have already visited Australia, Norway, the Galapagos Islands, and plan to see more of the world upon his official retirement.
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