Dr. Ira “Dutch” Slade was a physician, horticulturist and preacher. It wasn’t that he couldn’t choose one career, but he felt it necessary to do all three, his children said.
“More than anything, he wanted to be a healer,” said son Scott Slade, morning host on AM 750 and 95.5 FM News/Talk WSB. “And, yes, there is a theme of life, sustaining life, cultivating life, between them all, and I think that was a very important part of him.”
Dutch Slade, a Griffin native, ran a medical practice, a greenhouse and pastored In Christ Fellowship Church. He often found ways to blend his interests, such as the clinic he opened in 1985 at his home. The doctor believed that if he listened long enough, people would tell him what he needed to know to reach a correct diagnosis, his son said. This clinic gave him and his patients the time and space to work through a range of issues.
“He would bring people into his home who’d been struggling with a diagnosis or an elusive disease that was crippling their lives,” said Scott Slade, who lives in Suwanee. “And he would have people come stay with him and his wife; talking, listening and living with them, as they worked out the problem, be it medical, spiritual, or what have you.”
The elder Slade did not see anything noteworthy about his approach; it was simply what needed to be done, said son David Slade of Mount Berry. “For Dad, there were no boundaries between his work life and his faith life; it was all mixed together and part of the same thing,” he said. “At the end of the day, he wanted to live for the glory of God.”
Ira Hunt Slade Jr. of Griffin died Oct. 30 at his home after a brief decline in his health. He was 83.
“His body was just worn out,” said daughter Ann Walker of Griffin. “That’s all it was.”
A memorial service is planned for 3 p.m. Sunday at First Baptist Church of Griffin. Heritage Funeral Home, Griffin, was in charge of cremation arrangements.
Slade did a lot to advance medical care in his hometown and across the globe, his children said. He graduated from Emory University twice, once as an undergraduate and the second time in 1956 when he completed medical school. He worked in naval hospitals in Guam and American Samoa, before permanently returning to Griffin in the 1970s.
He left his private practice in Griffin to form a dedicated group of emergency room doctors for the Griffin-Spalding County Hospital, Walker said.
He went on to work as a physician at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. He retired in 2000 but his vocation as a healer never ended, she said.
Slade and his second wife, the former Linda Fry, also established Greenlife Gardens, where they sold a variety of plants, including some unique hybrids. The business functioned for the better part of a decade in the 1980s and early ’90s.
Slade managed to bring his love of horticulture into his ministry and medicine, Scott Slade said.
“He used everything at his disposal to reach people,” he said. “He just wanted to heal people.”
Additional survivors include daughters Cathy Roth of Enterprise, Ala., and Joan Sanders of Carrollton; sons Jonathan Slade of Charleston, S.C., and Hunt Slade of Griffin; brothers, Dick Slade and Dan Slade, both of Griffin; sister Mary Lail of Duluth; 21 grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.
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