A country boy at heart, Booker has always been fascinated with the grit and action of the rodeo circuit, an interest that grew during his medical residency in Jackson, Mississippi, host city for the Dixie National Rodeo each February. In 2006, he began an annual tradition of working on the medical staff for the event, planned this year for the week of February 11.
“The competitors have a different mindset,” said Booker of the stoic athletes he treats. “Pain doesn’t bother them a whole lot. They like to put injury repairs off until after the season if they can.”
While he sees multiple injuries — bumps, bruises, concussions and broken fingers — the worst Booker has had to treat to date was a saddle bronc’s broken tibia. That’s a surprisingly low rate of severe injury considering the intensity of the sport’s line-up, from bareback horse bucking to top-speed barrel racing.
“It’s fun to work with rodeo,” Booker said. “The people are down to earth folks and have a good time with the competition. It’s a great atmosphere.”
Booker, who practices with Southlake Orthopaedics, credits the late Dr. Bill Bryant, a community scion, with setting him on the path to a medical career. Bryant, a founder of Southlake Orthopaedics, was at home in a clinical setting or on the sidelines at a game for Hoover high school athletes. It was Bryant who encouraged the teenager to look into orthopedics.
Booker grew up working in the corn and cotton fields of his family’s 650-acre farm in Dallas County. When Bryant, who owned the adjacent farm, needed help caring for his horses, the 15-year-old began to help out.
“I liked to work with my hands and enjoyed working with him on the farm,” Booker said. “He told me I should get some experience with orthopedic medicine.”
After shadowing Bryant in several surgeries and in his work with Hoover High School, Booker realized his mentor was right about the career he would pursue.
“I decided to stay on that track all the way through school,” Booker said. “Once I decided I was interested in orthopedics, I knew I wanted to work with Dr. Bryant. He died 6/06/2006, and I got of medical school in 2010. I stuck with it and came back to Southlake. “
While Booker regrets not being able to practice side-by-side with Bryant, he relishes the time the two shared.
“We were close,” Booker said. “He and my dad were good friends, and I spent a lot of time in the outdoors hunting and fishing with him and his boys through my high school years.”
While many orthopedists tend to focus on a specific area of anatomy, Booker prefers general orthopedics and the versatility it allows.
“I like to be involved in a little bit of everything,” he said. “My attraction to orthopedics as opposed to internal medicine in the first place was the ability to repair things. If something is broken or dysfunctional, you try to repair it and have good outcomes. I think it goes back to liking to work with my hands.”
These days, it’s not uncommon for him to see patients who had been treated by Bryant in the past.
“It feels like he’s always around, even when he’s not,” Booker said. “He was a strong influence in my life. Many of the contacts that I’ve made in the community are people I met through him. He touched a lot of lives.”
These days, working on the farm is therapeutic, allowing Booker to take a break from the intricacies of physiological repair and focus instead on grooming his fields to produce bumper crops. This year, Booker has spent roughly 430 hours farming, putting in the time when he has the occasional weekday break or weekend away.
“When I’m down there, I have almost no cell phone service,” Booker said. “It’s good to be able to get away. There are many different types of stresses, and farming can be challenging, but it’s a good change of pace. It lets me put down the stress of my orthopedic job and do something different to clear my mind.
“Farming is pretty time-intensive. I’m there more frequently during the planting and the harvest. It’s nice to be able to adjust my schedule during the times I have to be more busy there.”
His daughter, nine, and son, six, also enjoy the outdoors, growing up as he did, learning the ins and outs of working the land at his father’s side.
“They have a lot of fun picking cotton and riding the tractor,” he said. “My son helps me bag corn that we harvest to sell locally to deer hunters, and sometimes I let him drive the tractor around in the field.”
Booker and wife Deidre have a working project in Dallas County, the restoration of an 1800s era home. With his father’s experience as a building contractor, the old plantation house renovation occupies the couple when the fields lie fallow.
“It’s great that I can spend time farming and that I could do that with my dad and mom,” Booker said. “I like that my kids are being brought up the same way I was and that they have that exposure to the country.
