Sam Caruthers 1936-2020

Dr. Samuel Brooks Caruthers Jr. was born in the small town of Grenada, Mississippi. After an idyllic boyhood he attended Princeton University for three years before abandoning Ivy League foolishness for the more hospitable environment of medical school in Memphis Tennessee. While there, he courted Helen Kimbrough, the most beautiful woman in Grenada -- no, strike that -- the most beautiful woman in the world! They were married in 1960 and remained together till her death in 2015, and for all that time he remained in awe and in love with her.

Sam had a brilliant and stubbornly independent mind. He was a Goldwater Republican, (How many of those have you ever met?) who loved woodworking, boating, travel, opera, and art. He became a successful radiologist, first in Denver, Colorado and later in Little Rock, Arkansas, but he was increasingly alienated from the dysfunctional culture of Big Medicine. When his investments gained him enough money to retire, that's what he did.

In retirement he began to study art in earnest and was soon a beloved member of Lifequest, the Arkansas League of Artists, the Arkansas Pastel Society, and the Mid-Southern Watercolorists. As slowly failing health began to cut him off from his more active pursuits, art became his primary hobby -- strange, wonderful, whimsical art in many mediums.

His sketchbook was always with him, even as he sat bedside with his beloved wife during her six year battle with ovarian cancer, then later as his own cancer was revealed as the source of many mysterious ailments. Art poured out of him till the end his life.

We'd like to share that art with you.

If you should like to own a part of his work, click here to head over to Redbubble. Net proceeds will go towards supporting the arts in Arkansas.

From his family,
Brooks, Stephanie, Leigh and Frank

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Photo by Bob Ocken