Accomplished doctor and former Green Beret works at Rocky Boy clinic

Dr. Andrew Cottingham is a former Green Beret who served in Vietnam and a renowned ophthalmologist who helped start one of the largest eye banks in the world; he played football at a major university, was buried in an avalanche after trying to ski on it and has been published in multiple medical journals - and one week out of the month, the 79-year-old journeys from San Antonio to work at the Rocky Boy clinic, for reasons, he said, that have largely to do with staying alive.

"I don't really think men should ever retire," he said. "Because - you've heard this - a man retires and he dies."

Cottingham works with Barton Associates, a locum tenens company that contracts with Indian Health Service, which sends out doctors like him where they're needed. For the first week this month, and possibly the next five months, he'll travel to north-central Montana, stay in Havre and drive to Rocky Boy to work.

Former students such as Havre ophthalmologist Dr. Marc Whitacre have dubbed Cottingham "the real most interesting man alive."

Cottingham was born in Bennettsville, South Carolina, and grew up in Laurinburg, North Carolina, which, he said, is not wholly unlike Havre.

"When I grew up, I grew up in a small town. It's kind of like Havre, I guess. We weren't over 10,000 population," he said.

Cottingham speaks with a light southern drawl.

He said he didn't leave Laurinburg until he went to college at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Although he had his eye on a medical career - "it was orthopedics or ophthalmology" - football was going to be his medical training pass. At Duke, he said, he played linebacker, fullback and punter while studying pre-med. At 79, Cottingham stands well over 6 feet tall.

"The recruiter at Duke said, 'Listen, Andy, you have to remember that the people who make the selections for medical school, they go to football games, too,'" he said. "So when I got ready to apply to medical school, the guy that interviewed me said, 'Andy, I've been watching your grades, and they've improved tremendously. And also, your kicking has improved.'"

While in medical school at Duke, Cottingham said, he joined the U.S. Army Reserves, and was enrolled while he did his internship and made the decisions to go on active duty as well as pick his medical specialty.

"It was during my internship that I made my final decision - 'I'm going into ophthalmology,'" he said. "I loved ophthalmology because we get to use all these microscopic instruments and you operate under the microscope. And we were the only ones using very fine micro-surgical tools."

To expedite his training, he said, he made another major decision.

"I did something that I thought would enhance my ability to get a residency quicker, and that was to do something they had trouble getting doctors to do, and that was join the Special Forces. So I did that," he said.

All in all, Cottingham said he received the same training as every other Green Beret; he went to jump school at Fort Benning and he received Special Forces training at Fort Bragg, jungle warfare training in Panama, and scuba diving training at Anacostia Maryland in Key West.

"I learned to use weapons, really all weapons, domestic as well as foreign," he said. "Mortars and explosives, that kind of stuff. I enjoyed it, all that kind of stuff."

Once he was in the Special Forces as a highly trained doctor in the U.S. Army, Cottingham said he then volunteered for some other things that were "rather dangerous."

Cottingham said that, sometime in the mid-'60s in Vietnam, a mutated string of malaria had broken out and the U.S. military needed doctors to go into the combat zone, find out where the disease was coming from and how to treat it because, so far, none of the conventional medication was working.

"So I volunteered for that," he said. "To find where it's coming from."

Cottingham said he developed a hypothesis before going into the combat zone, and he was going to test it.

When U.S. soldiers got the new strain of malaria, it was learned that the incubation period was 14 days. Cottingham said he believed the malaria was being harbored by the North Vietnamese as it came down the Ho Chi Mihn trail.

"We proved it by going into combat and, by George, 14 days or so later our troops began to get ill with this strain of malaria. So that showed us. You see, it's delivered by the mosquito - it'll bite the enemy, it'll bite us as while we're shooting at each other. Or you go into an area that they've recently been in, and the mosquito will still be there," he said.

He then gave some soldiers a medicine that had been developed in U.S. research centers back home in the States, and some a placebo, and that's how he said he learned which medicine helped with the mutated malaria,

"So we proved it," he said.

Cottingham said he was in the military for 20 years, a good portion of that time spent getting more medical training. He said he went to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for ophthalmology training, Key Biscayne, Florida, for a fellowship, and Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami.

In the 1980s, Cottingham said he taught other doctors to be ophthalmologists at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado. During that time, he also taught at University of Colorado in Boulder, and he said that's when he met local doctor, Marc Whitacre, who joined Cottingham in developing the Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank, which is one of the largest eye banks in the world.

These days, Cottingham said, he is semi-retired. He works one Tuesday a week in San Antonio and stays in Montana a week out of the month, where, he said, he's met some wonderful friends.

Aside for reasons of life prolongation, he said, he believes it would be a shame to let all those years of training rust or go unused.

"I want to keep my mind working," he said. "I put too much effort into learning what I do and getting good at it to quit."

Cottingham said he has taken advantage of his time in Montana. He visited Glacier National Park in October, Yellowstone National Park in November, and he said he's also visited the Little Bighorn Battlefield. He added that he looks forward to checking out the Bear Paw Mountains.

As for the Montana weather, he said he didn't remember if he'd ever been in below-zero temperatures before. But, he added, he didn't mind the snow, or the cold.

While speaking of snow, he said he was reminded about the time he was buried in an avalanche.

He learned how to ski while living in Europe. He got so good, he said, that he got on the international ski patrol. He was on vacation with his family in Arosa, Switzerland, some time in his mid-30s.

"I was in the very, very advanced class, and my instructor made a mistake and we were caught in an avalanche. The avalanche broke under us, as opposed to coming down on us. And I had to ski down on top of the avalanche. And I made it almost out," he said. "Right at the end, it caught me and I got buried. But by the time I was buried, I was hot, very hot, sweaty, very tired."

While buried in the avalanche, he said, he kept telling himself that he just needed to get his breath.

"But I never did," he said. "I kept going in and out of consciousness. Next thing I knew, they had me out lying on my back, sticking needles in me and everything."

As for the instructor and another student, Cottingham said, they died during the incident.

He added that people have asked him if "life passed before his eyes" and, he said, something like that did happen. He thought about his family and his mother, and, he said, he had some weird thoughts, too.

"I had this watch I had just gotten, and it was the first watch that I'd ever had that was battery-operated," he said. "And I kept thinking: 'I'll be darned. I might die here and this watch is still going to be going.'"

Nearly 80 and still going, Cottingham said that these days he writes about his adventures.

"I wrote some memoirs that I've called 'The Luckiest Man.' Really, I did it for my grandchildren," he said. "When I got older, I wished I'd asked more questions."