Dr. Louis R. Robey
Dr. Louis R. Robey was the first general surgeon in Houston, when he started his practice in 1955. He was a native Houstonian, but completed his internship and residency training in St. Louis, Missouri at Homer G. Phillips Hospital, which was originally named City Hospital #2 when it opened in 1919. In a recent interview, Dr. Blanchard Hollins called Dr. Robey and the other doctors who received their training around the same time period, “the first of our breed,” because he said that, beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, they were the first doctors who had gone through approved residency programs. As newly trained physicians in various specialties of medicine, Dr. Robey and others were bringing a different kind of medical style, a formal training, and a new kind of skill to the close-knit Houston black community and the small hospitals where they served their patients. Dr. Robey’s son, Don, also became a general surgeon.
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