``Being able to take care of people from infancy to old age is part of my concept of being a family physician,' Luce said.  Luce, who recently was honored as Outstanding Rural Health Physician for 2005, wanted to be a family practitioner, but his first experiences as a doctor were in the Army.

Like many men of his generation, the Vietnam War helped shape his future.  With the draft looming, ``I decided I wanted to go in as a medical, instead of the infantry,' he said.  After attending medical school at Michigan State University, Luce served seven years of active duty in military teaching hospitals.

A man with a gentle smile that widens his lean, tanned face, Luce said Dayton suited his criteria for a place to raise his four children and to practice rural family medicine.  ``Dayton was the most attractive of the places that were looking for a doctor at the time. It was the only place where people didn't talk about what they do to get away (from town.)' he said.

Luce was in private practice until 2001, when he joined the Columbia County Health System clinic as one of four physicians. Two of those physicians commute to the clinic in Dayton.  There were some trade-offs in giving up his Dayton Family Medicine practice, but it was economically a good move, and he is no longer on call 24/7 for his patients.  But, ``I miss being a personal physician to as many people as I was before,' he said.

Luce has seen health care go through changes in Columbia County, many of them driven by costs of malpractice insurance, and decreasing reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid.  There was a time when he delivered eight to 10 babies a year, and 20 to 30 came into the world at the hospital.

Surgeries were performed at the hospital until about 1985 or 1986 and births ceased in 1987.  ``The cost of malpractice insurance made it impractical to continue. It cost more to buy the insurance than you would get for delivering the babies,' he said.

Luce is one of four physicians at Columbia Family Clinic, but there was a time when he and Dr. S.R. Hevel in Waitsburg were the only physicians seeing patients in Columbia County.  Dayton has provided Luce the opportunity to fulfill his personal goals.  ``It's the satisfaction of being able to be helpful to people and to use the talents that you have. It's the feeling of being able to do something worthwhile,' he said.