Joe Holoubek

Joseph Edward "Joe" Holoubek (Physician who helped establish the LSU Medical Center in Shreveport, Louisiana)
Born	September 9, 1915 Clarkson, Colfax County Nebraska, USA
Died	May 17, 2007 (aged 91) Shreveport, Louisiana Resting place: Forest Park East Cemetery in Shreveport
Spouse	Dr. Alice Baker Holoubek (married 1939-2005, her death) Children: Mary Jo O'Rear Brian Baker Holoubek, Sr. (deceased) Robert Joseph "Bob" Holoubek Martha Fitzgerald
Religion	Roman Catholic

Joseph Edward Holoubek, known as Joe Holoubek (September 9, 1915 – May 17, 2007), was a physician and author who chaired the committee that established the Louisiana State University School of Medicine in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Background

A native of Clarkson in Colfax County in eastern Nebraska, he graduated in 1932 from Clarkson High School and obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and his medical credentials from the University of Nebraska Medical School in Omaha. Holoubek was married for sixty-six years to the former Alice Baker (1914-2005), a native of Paragould in Greene County, Arkansas. The daughter of a physician, Alice graduated from Bolton High School in Alexandria, Louisiana, and the LSU School of Medici in New Orleans.

The Holoubek began their practice of intenal medicine together in Shreveport in 1945 and embarked on a career of more than four decades thereafter. The couple met in 1937 at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, as senior medical students in a summer fellowhip program in pathology. They courted by mail for two years until their marriage and pursuit of a joint medical career beginning as postgraduate fellows at the LSU Medical School in New Orleans. From 1941 to 1945, Holoubek served in the United States Army Medical Corps.

Career

Holoubek was a cardiologist and a clinical professor of medicine. The Shreveport Medical Society elected him chairman to pursue the establishment of LSU Medical Center. Upon his retirement, he was named professor emeritus. In 2006, the LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport endowed the Holoubek Professorship in Medicine. The center conducts the annual Holoubek lecture series delivered by a physician who specializes in internal medicine.

An active Roman Catholic, Holoubek was named by the pope as Knight Commander with Star of the Order of St. Gregory the Great and Knight Grand Cross of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. He was a founding member of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Shreveport. He was a member of the Catholic Academy of Sciences. In 2004, he published a gospel-based novel entitled, Letters to Luke: From His Fellow Physician Joseph of Capernaum. The novel won the Writers Digest Award for Inspirational Literature and the Independent Publishers Award for Religious Fiction. He wrote nearly fifty articles, book chapters, and books on a wide variety of topics, including cardiology, medical ethics, and health care of the religious and clergy. He and his wife spent a half-century studying the physical sufferings of Jesus Christ during the crucifixion. The couple presented more than three hundred one-hour mediations on the subject.

Holobek served on the board of the American Heart Association, was the president of the Louisiana Heart Society and president of the National Federation of Catholic Physicians Guilds. He was associate editor of the Linacre Quarterly, the official publication of the Catholic Medical Association. In his later years, he was a delegate to the Task Force on Aging of the Catholic Diocese of Shreveport and a delegate to the Committee on Aging of the Louisiana Interfaith Conference. He received distinguished service awards from the Shreveport Medical Society, the National Federation of Catholic Physicians Guilds, the American Heart Association, and the American College of Cardiology. He also worked to obtain staffing privileges at Shreveport-area hosdpitals for African-American physicians.

Death and family

Two years after the passing of his wife, Joe Holoubek died in a Shreveport hospital at the age of ninety-one. The couple is interred at Forest Park East Cemetery in Shreveport. The Holoubeks had two sons, Brian Baker Holoubek, Sr. (1945-2017), a farmer in Kingston in DeSoto Parish, and Robert Joseph "Bob" Holoubek (born June 18, 1948), a staff pharmacist at the Overton Brooks Veterans Medical Center in Shrevepo rt, and two daughters, Mary Jo O'Rear (born 1943) of Corpus Christi, Texas, who was employed by South Texas Community College, and Martha H. Fitzgerald (born August 22, 1951), the wife of Thomas Patrick Fitzgerald, III, of Shreveport.

A former columnist for The Shreveport Times, Martha Fitzgerald wrote a book in 2012 about her parents, The Courtship of Two Doctors: A 1930s Love Story of Letters, Hope & Healing, published by her Little Dove Press.