Piano Man

Dan Baxter is a retired obstetrician-gynecologist who grew up in northwest Oklahoma in a family of farmers, ranchers, carpenters, and preachers. In the summer before his senior year in high school, he began working in radio and television. This twelve-year career would take him to Saigon in 1967 and 1968 at American Forces Vietnam Network. When his two years in the Army were over, he returned to Tulsa and a career in radio and television news. While working at a Tulsa television station, he told his wife he wanted to return to college for a medical degree. With her help and the G.I. Bill, he became an obstetrician-gynecologist who delivered almost three thousand babies and took care of women for thirty years. Upon retiring in 2011, he moved to northwest Arkansas and joined a life-writing group. He produced two hundred memoir pieces, along with poetry and fiction before bowing to his wife's long-standing wish that he tell his story he had been carrying since his youth. This tale of a New York City piano player stranded in Baxter's home town after World War II incorporated many of the true and not-so-true stories of a small college town on the prairie. Dick Gills' finding of love and acceptance occurs in spite of a secret and a life crisis. One reviewer said the town itself is a major character. Baxter is working on his next project: a compilation of the best of his memoir pieces. He may be reached at dbaxter1177@gmail.com.