About 50 staff, friends and family crowded into Genesis Health Systems Eldridge office Monday to surprise the winner of this year’s Genesis Distinguished Physician Award.
The recipient, Dr. Micheal Schreck, was examining patients in the back, oblivious to the growing hubbub in his office lobby.
When he emerged, the crowd sustained applause for an “old-school” doctor who is retiring in June after a 35-year-plus career in medicine, almost all of it in Eldridge.
“He is just a wonderful man, physician and father,” said daughter Katie Kean, who took a break from her job as a Genesis emergency room registered nurse to participate in the surprise.
She was joined by her mom, Susan, siblings, Sara and Nathan Schreck, and Dr. Schreck’s mother, Luverna, and father-in-law, Walter Roukey.
The doctor’s shock gave way to modesty, thanking the staff that surrounded him, and his mother who arrived from his Durant home town.
“I grew up on a farm in Durant, which had the same family feel as we have here,” the doctor said.
Schreck is a Durant High School class of 1970 alumnus. He said a high school term paper assignment got him interested in medicine.
Schreck graduated from the University of Iowa medical school in 1980. He said he passed up opportunities at the University of Vermont and in Evansville to find a community where he could establish a family practice.
Staff medical assistant Morgan DeWitt nominated Schreck for the award with an essay.
“Since Dr. Schreck has been practicing for over 35 years in the Eldridge area, it makes him quite the community icon — one that will be missed when he retires this summer,” she wrote. “He still holds this image within the community of an old-school physician, one that isn’t motivated by a corporate-led medicine, and takes the time to listen rather than sit behind a computer screen.”