Former patients and friends of Dr. Virgil D. Matthews were saddened Monday to hear the beloved 89-year-old physician had died at his Muskogee home.

“You couldn’t have asked for a kinder or more competent doctor than Dr. Matthews. It’s like losing a member of the family,” said Linda Hattaway, director of the Muskogee County Health Department.

When Matthews died he was the medical director of the Muskogee County Health Department, Hattaway said.

“Not only did the staff love him, the patients loved him. They’d say, ‘He not only delivered my kids — he delivered me,’” she said.

He delivered more than 8,000 babies during his career, retiring from private practice in 1994. But he didn’t retire from caring for poor people until two months ago.

He recently said the best thing he’d heard in his life was when two men were recently sitting at the clinic and one suggested his ill friend needed to see Dr. Matthews.

“What’s he specialize in?” the man asked.

“What do you mean, ‘specialize in?’ He specializes in poor people — like us,” his friend said.

Matthews said it thrilled his heart to hear that statement, adding that making money was never a goal of his, but treating people who needed him was.

In his spare time, he was a member of the Muskogee Board of Education for 32 years. He was the founding father of the Muskogee Public School Foundation.

Muskogee Public Schools Superintendent Mike Garde praised Matthews’ contributions “as a school board member and a citizen of the community.”

“He was a stabilizing member of the school board, and he knew three administrations,” Garde said. “His experience gave superintendents the opportunity to bounce things off of him. The board has not met his standards before or since.”

Matthews served earlier on the city council. In 1990, he received the A.H. Robins Award for Community Service from the Oklahoma State Medical Association for the physician who, in addition to his practice, had done the most for the community.

“I loved every minute of it,” he recently said. “I wouldn’t change anything.”

A Sunday school teacher most of his adult life, he presently was a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Fort Gibson.