It all began at Wooster, where his father, E.W. Stoneburner, was a professor of education, and where Lawson and his twin brother, Wesley, enrolled in 1933. “I didn’t think initially that I would go into medicine,” he says. But slowly the idea took hold, nurtured in part by Roy Grady ’16 and Ralph Bangham, chairs of the departments of chemistry and biology, respectively.

The Stoneburners lived on West University Street, but were not members of the nearby country club. (“Not on a professor’s salary,” he notes drily.) Lawson caddied, however, and so got to play golf on Saturday mornings with the other caddies. He also swam for the College, played the violin in the Wooster Symphony, and enjoyed dances and parties. In 1937 he graduated with a double major in chemistry and biology, and headed for medical school at Ohio State University (again with brother Wesley). The brothers worked together at a Columbus restaurant, and that’s where Lawson met Louise Dinger, Ohio State’s homecoming queen for 1940. They married in 1943, a week after he completed medical school.

After an internship and residencies in Cincinnati and Atlanta, a hitch in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, and two years in Tampa, Florida, the Stoneburners settled in Greenville, South Carolina, where Lawson opened a private practice in general surgery in 1952. Over the years, he served as president of both the Greenville County Medical Society and the South Carolina Surgical Society, member of the board of directors of Blue Cross-Blue Shield of South Carolina, and deacon of First Presbyterian Church of Greenville.

In 1986, Lawson retired from private practice. Within weeks, however, a colleague asked if he would help start a free medical clinic for Greenville residents who could not afford adequate care. “I didn’t have to think long about it,” Lawson told The Greenville Journal earlier this year. “I knew it was something worthwhile.”
So began his second career, as volunteer medical director of the Greenville Free Medical Clinic. When the doors opened in 1987, a handful of volunteer doctors saw about 20 patients one day a week. Today, more than 200 physicians volunteer their time four days a week and the number of patient visits has grown to more than 10,000 a year.

Lawson downplays his role, emphasizing the many volunteers who have made the clinic a success. But his colleagues know better.

Dr. Pam Snape, one of the first volunteers and still actively involved, told The Greenville News that Lawson’s early involvement was critical to the clinic’s success. “People had great respect for him. When he said he was giving his time, it helped recruit others.”

Suzie Foley, the clinic’s executive director, echoes the sentiment. “It was like a snowball. He was the one who early on stepped up to the plate and said, ‘This is something we need to do, and my colleagues need to do it with me.’”

Last fall, after 15 years as medical director, Lawson retired a second time. F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, “There are no second acts in American lives.” Too bad he never met Lawson Stoneburner.