Dr. Jan and Shirley Levy's Radford Citizens of the Year award.

Photos courtesy of Lora Gordon

Dr. Jan (left) and Shirley Levy (right) were recently named Radford Citizens of the Year by The Rotary Club of Radford Noon. The couple has provided 45 years of medical service to local residents and people abroad. Also pictured is Linda Gardiner, former president of The Rotary Club of Radford Noon who helped implement the chapter's first Citizen of the Year Award.

| Mary Hardbarger

mary.hardbarger@roanoke.com, 381-1679

RADFORD -- Since 1994, Dr. Jan Levy and his wife, Shirley, have served as medical volunteers in countries such as Kenya, Rwanda and Sudan.

There, they provided medical assistance, using their knowledge and faith to create lasting impressions on the people they served and the surgeons and medical staff they taught.

For their service to the community and abroad, the Levys were recently named Radford Citizens of the Year by The Rotary Club of Radford Noon.

Jan Levy met his wife at the former Radford Community Hospital in the early 1970s. Shirley Levy was a student nurse, and Jan Levy was a practicing surgeon.

The surgeon described himself as an "Old Buckeye" who left the big city and moved to the mountains after he heard about Blacksburg from a few friends.

"What first appealed to me about the area was the practice itself," Levy said. "I found out later that I really liked the people and my staff and decided to stay," he said.

Shirley Levy worked in her husband's office and later in the operating room as a surgical nurse.

"They're a great team," said Linda Gardiner, former president of The Rotary Club of Radford Noon.

Gardiner helped implement the chapter's first Radford Citizen of the Year Award during her tenure and said that the Levy's commitment to the community and to the betterment of people reflected the club's motto: "service above self."

"The Levys are so caring about others, and will do anything for anyone, no matter what it takes," she said.

In 1975, Jan Levy just happened to be on call when Gardiner was rushed to the hospital after being in a major car wreck.

"He put me back together," Gardiner said.

In 1989, the couple took their first overseas mission to Kigoma, Tanzania.

There, they recognized a great need for surgeons and wanted to work toward a way to provide their services.

In 1994, Shirley Levy retired, and her husband followed in her footsteps soon after.

Early retirement gave them the opportunity to take longer mission trips, sometime staying as long as six or seven months in one location.

Together, the couple would create sanitary operating theaters for citizens and often provide medical training for the staff and surgeons on hand.

In Kabul, Afghanistan, the Levy's worked north of most of the turmoil, recalling only occasional missile strikes miles away.

"It was a relatively peaceful experience for us," Jan Levy explained. "The greatest challenge was designing the operating room inside an existing structure."

On many occasions, the Levys would have to start from the ground up, often using their own money to facilitate the operating rooms. They would provide assistance and the necessary supplies and equipment to make the operating rooms clean and sanitary.

"One of the neat things was, no matter where we were, most of the people we worked with were open to Christianity," Levy said. "That was a big draw for us."

Many of the mission trips the Levys took were sponsored by the Virginia and Southern Baptist Association's World Medical Missions and Samaritan's Purse.

After returning from their last mission trip in Tansen, Nepal, Jan Levy was in a life-changing accident.

He fell out of a tree while trimming it, partly paralyzing him. Today, 71-year-old Jan Levy uses a wheelchair and is unsure of his future in missionary work.

Although he may never travel overseas to help others again, he says he wants to find a way to continue giving back to the area.

"He'll continue to put his all into everything," Gardiner said.

According to Gardiner, Jan Levy can once again drive a car, just a little more than a year after the accident.

"Now, that's perseverance," Gardiner said.