An award that remembers a doctor who cared will go to a Lavington man keen to continue that tradition.
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Third year medical student Kyle Green received the Dr John McDonald Scholarship yesterday at the University of NSW Rural Clinical School, Albury campus.
Presented since 2013 by the Rotary Club of Albury Hume, the annual scholarship is intended for medical students looking to work in Albury or a rural area.
Mr Green, 22, said his interest in medicine evolved from watching his father Heath work at Albury hospital but also the impact of his late mother Kim's treatment and rehabilitation after she had a stroke aged 30.
"She was amazing, she was quite possibly the strongest person I've ever met," he said. "To have your life turned upside down the way she did and to continue on."
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The former Murray High School student said he was only two years old at the time while his two sisters were also young.
"I guess it made us a pretty close family, we looked after each other for a really long time," Mr Green said.
He thanked the Rotary club for the scholarship, describing it as an honour.
"It's really important for rural students to be supported to stay rural," he said.
Raised in Albury, Dr John McDonald had a four-decade career in England and Australia that included working as a GP on the Snowy hydro scheme at Jindabyne.
He was a clinical haematologist at the Royal Children's Hospital and an assistant physician to outpatients at St Vincent's Hospital before moving back to Albury to practise as a specialist physician.
A Rotary Club of Albury Hume member for many years, Dr McDonald was a board member of the Albury Wodonga Cancer Foundation as well as a member and club doctor of Albury Tigers Football Club.
Dr McDonald's wife Margaret said her late husband would be thrilled to know rural students were being helped through the Rotary scholarship.
"It means that his legacy will live on," she said.
"He was really a country boy at heart, he embraced the bush."
After Dr McDonald's death, his wife continued to hear stories about how he had touched people's lives.
"(One woman) said, 'You don't know me, but your husband used to visit my father - he was an invalid - for 20 years'," Mrs McDonald recalled.
"He'd go and have a coffee and they'd watch The Simpsons together. He was the old-fashioned doctor."
Mrs McDonald gave Mr Green The Mind and the Matter, a meditation guide that Dr McDonald published in 2006.
