39 www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM throughout his residency and during his practicing years, she understood the toll sickness could take on a fam-ily. As someone who had grown up in the country, far away from hos-pitals, she understood the hardships placed on families that must travel to support the wellness of a loved one. That is why, with the women’s aux-iliary, she helped start a hospitality house to comfort out-of-town fami-lies of long-term care patients. It was eventually bought out by NHRMC and served the hospital for more than 25 years. In those early years, Tinsley and his medical partners traveled to Burgaw once a week to practice the country-style medicine that he had learned from his uncle. Because Burgaw did not yet have its own hospital, all of the members of Wilmington Surgical Associates were required to work one shift a week, and because the roads were still unpaved, uneven and very dark, Betty always accompanied Tinsley on these trips and sat outside in the waiting room knitting until they were ready to leave. Decades into his career, Tinsley was still receiving praise for the work he did in Burgaw. “Years later this fella came into my office and he needed to have an operation, and he said, ‘You didn’t know it, but you took my appendix out when I was six years old.’ He was about 30 years old,” Tinsley explains. “He went to check out of my office and the receptionist said, ‘I’m sorry but you have an old bill here from 20 years ago for $50 that your father never paid.’ And he said, ‘Darn! I’d be happy to pay it.’” Although Tinsley has had a long, rewarding career there is only one thing he would do again if he could. “If I had one wish it would be that I could be 25 years old and doing it all over again,” Tinsley says. “My mother used to tell me: You have to do something, because you have to pay the Lord back for your oxygen.”
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