Growing up in California, Alan Alda, star of television’s MASH, was Reed Panos’ hero.
“I’m kind of a dreamer, so back when I was 16, I was fascinated with him and wanted to become a trauma surgeon,” he says.
Reed achieved the goal but it took him a few years longer than he anticipated.
Graduating from college, Reed spent five years as an Army tank mechanic. “The Army wanted their time from my ROTC obligation and would not let me go to medical school,” he says.
So, he transferred to the Air Force and attended the Uniformed Services University of the Health Services in Bethesda, Md., where in 1986, he was in the college’s sixth graduating class.
For the next 24 years, Reed was stateside as a reconstructive surgeon in San Diego, the Washington, D.C. area and Texas.
“One thing that I was a bit disappointed about is that I never went overseas,” he says. “They only had a handful of reconstructive plastic surgeons in the military – four or five in each branch – so they kept you in the large medical centers in the U.S.”
Reed has operated on almost every part of his patients over the years.
“We can reconstruct anything except for the eyeball and the brain,” he says. Following the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” incident in Somalia, he was part of the surgical reconstruction team that operated on the survivors.
Retiring from the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel, Reed and his wife, Stacey, moved to Champaign, Ill., where he started a surgery program and taught at the University of Illinois, became chief of surgery and practiced as reconstructive surgeon.
“It was one of the few rural trauma centers in the U.S. – they’re usually in large cities – and it was a booming business,” he recalls. “Rural people don’t like to see doctors in big cities because they don’t like big cities. So, they would come to us in Champaign.”
While Reed liked Champaign and the hospital, he and Stacey had endured a decade of winters there.
“I started talking to buddies at work about how I’m tired of the snow,” he says.
Stacey also had developed Multiple sclerosis and needed a less stressful environment. After checking out places in Texas and Arizona, they decided on Florida. And after investigating several locales in the state, they visited The Villages.
“I was fascinated within 30 minutes,” he admits. In 2013, they bought their home in the Village of Sunset Ridge.
Throughout his medical career, Reed had pursued his dreams. During medical school, he and several buddies bought a used Piper aircraft, led by a friend, a B-52 instructor, who taught him to fly.
“My share of the aircraft was $300,” he says. “I had an instructor. So, for $800 bucks worth of gas, I spent 200 hours and got my pilot’s license. And what a blast that was!”
Reed also took up alpine climbing, visiting Alaska’s Wrangell-St. Elias National Park many times and summiting Mount Drum, which rises some 12,000 feet above the glacier. He says he’d still go climbing but there’s one problem.
“The issue is getting to be 64 years old. I can’t find anyone who wants to go with me!” he says.
While stationed in D.C., Reed became interested in long-distance bicycling, an activity he still pursues in The Villages.
Moving to Florida’s Friendliest Hometown also has allowed Reed to start chasing down more of his dreams. An avid gardener, his backyard has patches of milkweed among the citrus and lilies. Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on the plant leaves – milkweed is the only plant that the caterpillars eat. The creatures were in decline but are on a comeback trend, partly because of so many homeowners growing milkweeds.
Reed also became interested in Bonsai, the Japanese art of cultivating small trees that mimic the shape and scale of full-size trees.
“Four years ago, I started going to the Bonsai Club meetings and I was hooked,” he exclaims.
Reed’s spacious lanai is home to dozens of miniature trees. Of course, that led him into pottery.
“I needed pots for my trees,” he says.
So, Reed took classes and now creates one-of-a-kind slab bonsai containers. “I roll the clay out on a machine, cut out the pieces and join them together,” he says.
Reed says that the glazing is the most difficult part. In his greenhouse, he shows off the orchid pots with vents in the sides so the plants can breathe.
“I’ve always wanted to play the guitar, ever since I was 16. But you can’t do that and work 100 hours a week in a hospital,” he says.
So, that dream had to wait a while. Three years ago, he began learning the guitar at the Lifelong Learning Academy with instructor Bill Thompson.
“He taught me the introductory stuff and how to read notes,” he says. “I remember going ‘Ding. Ding. Ding,’ like a three-year-old.”
His repertoire now includes mostly folk music – “simple music, like John Denver.”
While he says he is not a cook, Reed does grill. “I love to grill meat and burgers,” he says.
So what is Reed’s next dream?
“Maybe I’ll go into politics,” he thinks out loud. “I’m appalled at how people take advantage of the elderly. There are so many scams. The elderly are very, very vulnerable. We need to do something about that.”
John W Prince is a writer and Villages resident. For more information visit www.GoMyStory.com.