Orchard Grad Retires Having Delivered Over 7,000 Babies

Some might remember Scott Haswell as a kid, running around town with friends. Others may remember him at his high school graduation from Orchard High. 

Today, however, he's no longer a gangly kid or a proud high school graduate. Today, Dr. Scott Haswell is a proud retiree, having finished his last day as a practicing physician two weeks ago. 

How many babies did he deliver during his career?

Over 7,000.

However, Haswell didn't always set out to be a life-saver and deliverer. In fact, when he graduated high school in 1970, his goal was to join the Army and left for the military Academy at West Point, which he attended from 1970-1974. 

It was there that he first thought about medical school. 

"While I was at West Point, one of my roommates knew that he wanted to be a physician," explained Haswelll. "He was a bit of an influence on and the fact that we liked similar things. We liked chemistry, and we liked math and physics. So I took the one course that was offered at West Point for pre-med, it was called Human Body Biology. Took that my senior year and decided, 'well, maybe someday I'll do that."

But Haswell’s eyes were set on active duty, so immediately following his graduation from the academy, he joined the infantry. 

“I was intent on going into the infantry after I graduated, and I enjoyed the time that I spent as an infantry officer,” Haswell remembered. “I spent five years in the infantry working for the U.S. Army.”

Haswell Pursues His Passion
After his graduation from West Point, Haswell’s first duty station was in Panama, next to the Panama Canal. However, he wasn’t planning on going alone. 

“I spent about a year at the school in Fort Bend in Georgia” said Haswell, “And then August of 1975, the year after I graduated from the military academy, I came back to Orchard and got married. My wife, Sherilyn, had graduated from high school in Verdigre, so we got married and I took her to Panama with me.”

The Haswell’s spent three years in Panama, and it was during that time that they adopted their oldest daughter from Panama. 

By the end of his service in Panama, Haswell had learned a lot of things about himself, including, he said, his desire to make his own future. 

“I kind of learned the lessons of the U.S. Army and that is they would send you where they wanted you and I was a little more intent on making my own life and career so I decided I was going to go on to advanced schooling,” he said.

While at West Point, Haswell hadn’t declared a major, instead graduating with a bachelors of science in general studies and three minors. 

As Haswell remembered, “I had enough credits to go on in a number of different directions, and that’s a function of the U.S. Military academy. It has a broad spectrum of courses that are taught. I also had minors basically in French, engineering, chemistry and math. So I had many directions that I could go.”

Ultimately, however, Haswell’s desire was still to serve, so he looked toward his original interest ­— medicine. 

“My roommate who had influenced me had actually gotten out of the Army and went to med school on an Army scholarship,” Haswell said. “So I talked to him while he was in med school. And he said, ‘Oh yeah, this is just exactly what we thought it was and it’s great. You need to apply and go.’”

And that was all the push he needed. 

In 1979, Haswell applied and was accepted to medical school and requested to spend his last year as an infantry general in Fort Riley, Kansas, the closest station to Omaha and the University of Nebraska’s School of Medicine. 

“I spent about a year and five months working in Fort Riley, Kansas, and while there, my wife did her undergraduate or prep courses for nursing school.”

By the time the Haswell’s moved to Omaha, both Haswell and his wife were enrolled in school — Haswell to become a physician and his wife to obtain her associate’s degree as a registered nurse. 

When Haswell graduated in 1983 as Scott Haswell, M.D., he applied to do his residency with the Army and moved his family, by then a family of four with another baby daughter, down to El Paso, Texas. 

“So I went to El Paso, Texas on active duty, did my residency, which is four years after med school, to become an Obstetrician Gynecologist,” Haswell explained. “And we added our third daughter there. When I finished that, I owed the army a tour of payback and we spent that time in Stuttgard, Germany at the Fifth General Hospital in Bad Cannstatt.”

Accustomed to moving and living in foreign countries, the family of five didn’t hesitate to pack their bags and settle in Germany for three years. 

Haswell Hangs Up His White Coat
After Germany, however, the Haswell’s decided it was time to put down their roots. The family ended up in Richmond, Indiana, where Haswell’s group worked at the Reid Hospital. 

They spent 18 years there before their desire to be closer to family brought them to Columbus, Nebraska, where Haswell worked as a physician for the last 8 years of his career, before hanging up his white coat on July 27, 2016. 

When looking back at his career, Haswell said he has no regrets and is certain that becoming an OB-GYN was the right choice for him. 

“Basically, during your time in medical school, you get exposure to all different specialties in medicine and everybody finds out what they can tolerate and what they cannot,” explained Haswell. 

“I found out very quickly that, number one I like children but I hated working on them and I could not tolerate children who died. Number two, I didn’t like the depressive atmosphere of Oncology where everybody has cancer. The good thing about Obstetrics and Gynecology is that it’s relatively positive.”

As much as Haswell has enjoyed his life as an OB-GYN bringing life into this world, he’s happy to retire and put his energy into other things.

What kinds of things?

“Trouble,” he said, laughing.

All jokes aside, Haswell and his wife plan on seeing more of the world than they’ve already seen. 

“We like to travel,” said Haswell. “I hunt. I’ve mentioned places that we’ve seen connected to the army, but I’ve seen the rest of the world connected through hunting.”

Haswell says he plans on taking at least one hunting excursion per year, spending time with his grandchildren and fishing with family. 
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And, he says, now that he has more time, he’ll definitely make time to come visit his original home ­­— Orchard.