MORE HISTORY - Dr. Ben Knotts
Full story: http://www.spacecoastmedicine.com/2009/09/knotts-arrived-in-%E2%80%9857-first-chief-of-staff-at-cch.html
BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA – Some might consider it a demotion, but Ben Knotts seems happy to have gone from hospital chief of staff to yard boy.
PARADISE: The Knotts homestead on Cocoa Beach consists of an acre and a half of extensive gardens.
Instead of treating patients as a family practitioner or making executive decisions at a newly founded hospital, Knotts now spends his days helping maintain an acre and a half of extensive gardens at his Cocoa Beach home. His enjoyment of the task can be tied directly to his supervisor in the work: his wife, Kit.
Since their marriage in 1989, the two have transformed what was an overgrown oceanfront landscape into a showplace for water lily varietals. Pools of lilies stud the property, which teams with frangipani, screw pine, orchids, sea grape, Mexican flame vine, banana trees, and nary a blade of grass.
“If you see grass, it gets pulled,” said Knotts, 81.
Prominent in the more than 50 ponds is the Victoria Adventure, a hybrid that was Kit’s own creation. One area uses nine pools of various sizes to mimic lily pads, with a fountain in the shape of a Victoria flower as focal point.
The couple calls the home and grounds “Paradise,” though Knotts explains he’s not so vain to have come up with the idea himself. The name comes from comments from visitors who consistently exclaimed, “This is paradise” on seeing the property. “After about 20 people said the same thing, we figured we might as well call it Paradise,” he said.
“I Want To Do It All”
Knotts came to his personal paradise and second career as yard boy – he spurns the loftier title of gardener — via several decades in the medical profession.
Knotts grew up in Plant City, where his father owned a hardware store and his mother stayed home with him and his brother and sister. He doesn’t remember forming the desire to be a doctor, but the choice was easy. When asked to declare a major at Duke University, he recalled, “I didn’t hesitate. I put down ‘pre-med.’”
The intervening years affirmed his instinct. “I know I sure did make the right decision,” he said.
After graduating the University of Maryland Medical School, he headed to Miami for an internship at Jackson Memorial Hospital. A stint in the Navy took him to sea for 10 months, and then to Norfolk, Va., for another 10 months service at an outpatient clinic.
Choosing a specialty within the medical field proved much harder than the initial decision to become a doctor. He turned down an offer to stay in the Navy and specialize.
“I want to do it all,” he told his superior, and he wanted to do it in Florida.
He loved the University of Maryland, but not the big city life in Baltimore. He wrote to the chamber of commerce in Plant City, asking for recommendations of Florida towns with populations of less than 25,000. The director responded with three options and some advice. He’d circled St. Augustine, Sarasota and Cocoa Beach on the list of cities, and included a note by Cocoa Beach that read,
“This is where I would go. It’s the last frontier.”
Knotts looked into all three and had his preference for Cocoa Beach echoed by Dr. Joseph Von Thron, a fellow intern from Jackson Memorial who also was thinking of starting a practice in Cocoa Beach.
“He thought this would be a nice place to live. And he was right,” Knotts said.
Knotts–Von Thron Connection
Dr. Knotts moved to the town in 1957 and encountered a problem common to the time: housing. The town was small but growing quickly, and Knotts lived in a motel for several months. He took the first house that became available and lived in Convair Cove, a community developed by General Dynamics Corp. originally to house employees of the burgeoning space program.
Knotts and Von Thron started a practice together, two of just six doctors in town at the time. Knotts went on house calls from Satellite Beach to Cape Canaveral, and sometimes west to Merritt Island. He delivered babies at Wuesthoff Hospital, where he also performed surgeries.
If you wanted a paved road, you were limited to Atlantic Avenue and one block of what eventually became Minuteman Causeway. And if you wanted to avoid mosquitoes, you pretty much had to stay inside.
Knotts recalls the first time he visited Von Thron’s home: “That’s the funniest paint job I ever saw,” he remembers thinking about the speckled appearance of his partner’s house. That was until he got out of the car.
“I slammed the door and all the black spots flew away,” he said.
The office was open six and a half days a week, largely to compensate for not having a hospital nearby. In addition to long hours, that meant extra anxiety in the unpredictable world of delivering babies. Crossing the river to Wuesthoff depended on having the SR 520 swing bridges in place. You never knew whether a bridge would be swung open to allow a boat to pass, Knotts said. Worse yet, malfunctions would sometimes lock a bridge in the open position.
Creating Cape Canaveral Hospital
Knotts never had a crisis, though he vividly remembers transporting a pregnant teen in the backseat of his car, hoping he’d get to the hospital in time. She was in the terminal stage of labor, and waiting for an ambulance was out of the question.
“I got over the river to the hospital, delivered the baby and was home to Cocoa Beach in less than an hour,” he said.
The drama made for good stories, but didn’t add to quality of life for beachside residents. Knotts helped remedy that by working to create Cape Canaveral Hospital, serving for three years as the first chief of staff. He worked closely with Ken Wilson, the hospital’s first administrator, to outfit the fledgling institution.
“We would travel to the Army surplus store to buy supplies, looking for what we could buy that would help the most patients,” Knotts said.
During that first year, he made a decision that reflected the changing times. Dr. Musselman called about a patient who needed to be hospitalized because of a broken hip.
Knotts sensed there was something he wasn’t telling him, and it turned out the patient was African American. Admit the patient, he told him, and “if anyone gives you any guff, tell them I OK’d it,” he said. There were no issues.
Enjoying Nature’s Beauty
He continued his medical practice in Cocoa Beach for 17 years, then moved to Plant City to be near his aging parents. There he headed an emergency room for another 17 years, a position his practice had prepared him for well.
BEN WITH Cheech, the Knotts’ Gordon Setter.
“In family practice, you’d better know a little bit of everything,” he said. Cocoa Beach always was home, though, and he moved back.
When he’s not repairing a pool or working on another gardening task, Knotts enjoys pondering the ever-changing ocean landscape. One recent day, he was amazed to see what appeared to be hundreds of pelicans on the beach.
“They all got up at one time and started fishing. How do they know, sitting on the beach, that bait fish are out there?”
His view of the ocean is framed by the lilies, blooming amid three-foot-diameter saucer leaves, and other plantings he and Kit have labored two decades to create. Knotts might not want to take credit for the Paradise description, but the truth is, few are likely to argue the point.
DR. BEN KNOTTS enjoys maintaining the extensive gardens at his Cocoa Beach home. His enjoyment of the task can be tied directly to his supervisor in the work: his wife, Kit, pictured above left.
