Making Waco Men Better Since 1852

Walter Bidelspach

Dr. Walter Carlton Bidelspach

(1892-1942)

Walter Bidelspach was born March 2, 1892 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.  He was educated at Williamsport until the family moved to Texas in 1911 where they bought a farm in Crystal City.

Bidelspach attended college at the University of Texas and graduated from the medical school in Galveston in 1918. He taught at the same medical school for a year before moving to Waco where he became a resident physician at Providence. He opened a private practice in 1921 and soon became one of Waco’s most beloved family doctors. An article in the paper after his death rememembered him thusly:

“He was respected by his profession as an exceptional diagnostician. To his patients, he was the most dependable family doctor who inspired courage in the face of pain and suffering and whose greatest pleasure in life was to alleviate the ills of others. Dr. Bidelspach loved people, the rich and the poor, the humble and the mighty. He answered the calls of the sick at all hours of the day or night. He refused rest which might have lengthened his life. He left dinner with his meal half finished to answer the calls of the suffering. It was his devotion to men, women, and children that made the first thought at illness in many a Waco home: ‘Call Dr. Bidelspach.’ For vacations, he often traveled to some noted hospital where he might better learn how to tend the sick.”

Brother Bidelspach died February 15, 1942 at his home, 1815 Colonial Avenue.