PASADENA, Texas - Wednesday, July 26, 2000, marked the official grand opening of the Moody Health Center at Texas Chiropractic College with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
An 18,000-square-foot facility, the Moody Health Center is a state-of-the-art clinic that offers patient care to the surrounding communities and the southeast Texas region at large. Services available include: disability evaluations; manipulations; nutritional counseling; orthopedics; physical exams; rehabilitation; sports therapy; x-ray imaging; acupuncture; and medical services provided by Dr. Robert Baylis. The Moody Health Center is also a teaching facility for the college interns.
The clinic is named for Robert Moody, who heads the philanthropic Moody Foundation of Galveston. Mr. Moody's grandfather founded the American National Life Insurance Company. and left his estate to the Moody Foundation to "do good for the people in the state of Texas." A generous donation from the foundation helped TCC to make the dream of a new clinic a reality.
Robert Moody was asked why his foundation gave such a substantial sum of money to Texas Chiropractic College for the health center:
"People need help. There are other ways than through traditional medicine that can provide that help. I see where chiropractic assists in what we're doing. I'm a big believer in many of the things that chiropractors do. People think that they just give adjustments, but chiropractors, through not only adjustments but also other care such as nutritional counseling, can get the whole body healing. Chiropractors demonstrated the wisdom of what natural medicines and therapies could do long before the medical profession got into it."
"It takes tender, loving care and support to do those things to get people better. So I naturally used different kinds of help to get Russell the best recovery possible," explained Mr. Moody. Part of that help involved a young man named Carl Broom, a star football player in Galveston who didn't make the final cut with the San Francisco 49ers. Carl returned home and Mr. Moody asked Carl to help with his son's physical therapy. Carl got interested in PT work and helping people. He decided to become a chiropractor and graduated from Texas Chiropractic College.
"Russell used to walk with two canes," Mr. Moody related. Now he walks with one cane since Carl has been around."
Dr. Shelby Elliott, president of Texas Chiropractic College for the past 10 years, has seen many changes at the college. Once on the verge of bankruptcy, the college now boasts its fourth new building in the past five years. Instrumental in the turnaround of the financial condition of TCC and instrumental in the creation of this modern, new, multidisciplinary health care center, Dr. Elliott saw the wisdom in naming the clinic for Robert Moody, a man who has helped so many through his foresight and the generosity of the Moody Foundation.
When I graduated from chiropractic college in 1981 and started practice, I heard it all, and very little was positive. “You are a quack; you do not know what a subluxation is; you couldn’t get into a real health care program, so you chose the one that is slightly above a mail-order degree; you have no proof that chiropractic works; Are you really licensed?”, and so much more.
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A central challenge in creating our identity is that chiropractic is a method of care, not a technique or procedure. This is an important concept for us to promote. Our patients are treated with lifestyle modification, exercise, nutritional supplements, diet and a whole-body approach to accelerate the natural healing process. We are not simply CMT providers.
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