The Legacy of a Prairie Doc: Richard Holm

Dr. Richard "Rick" Holm (1949-2020), a 2016 South Dakota Hall of Fame Inductee, spent nearly four decades practicing internal medicine in Brookings and became known across the region as the Prairie Doc. Through radio, television, newspaper columns, and countless conversations at the bedside, he made honest, reliable health information a part of everyday life for South Dakota families, and the foundation he built with his wife, Joanie, continues that work today.

In this Storytellers interview, Joanie Holm reflects on the legacy her husband left behind. "Rick was the inspiration and the founder," she said, "and the legacy is that Rick lives on through all of this."

A Small Town Boy from De Smet

Rick Holm was raised in De Smet by his father, Earl, who came home from World War II and worked for IDS, and his mother, Jody, who worked at home and later at the De Smet News and De Smet Farm Mutual Insurance. He grew up with firm discipline, unconditional love, and a deep work ethic. In 1964, the family lost his sister, Susan, in a car accident. That loss stayed with him throughout his life and taught him to savor each moment while understanding how fragile life can be.

After high school, he attended the University of South Dakota for his undergraduate degree and his first two years of medical school before completing his training in Atlanta, where he also served for three years as full-time faculty at Emory. There he met his future wife, Joanie Smith, a registered nurse and certified pediatric nurse practitioner from Jacksonville, Florida. In 1981, the couple made the choice to return to Dr. Holm’s home state, and they settled in Brookings.

A Gift Worth Passing On

Dr. Holm never forgot that his teachers, mentors, and his South Dakota roots had educated him from his earliest years, all the way to becoming a doctor. He considered it an enormous gift for a small-town boy, and he believed he had an ethical responsibility to return that gift by passing it on to others.

He practiced as a hospitalist at Brookings Health System and in outpatient medicine at Avera Medical Group in Brookings, caring for people of all ages with a special focus on the elderly. He directed weekly continuing medical education at the hospital from 1983 through 2013 and served as a Full Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine, where his favorite role was teaching residents, medical students, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and pre-med students.

His voice reached the wider medical world as well. He contributed to four medical textbooks, published articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, and The Pharos, and wrote regularly for the South Dakota Journal of Medicine. With illustrator Dr. Judith Peterson, he authored The Picture of Health: A View from the Prairie in 2008. His colleagues entrusted him with leadership as Chief of Staff at his local hospital, President of the South Dakota State Medical Association, and Governor of the South Dakota Chapter of the American College of Physicians, which also named him a Master of the ACP.

The Prairie Doc

Perhaps Dr. Holm's greatest impact came from teaching the public. What began as a half-hour weekly call-in show on Brookings radio station KBRK grew into On Call with the Prairie Doc, a one-hour, prime-time program that has aired on South Dakota Public Broadcasting since 2001 and reached upwards of ten thousand viewers each week. Alongside volunteer physician guests, he took on topics from heart attack and stroke to depression, cancer, genetics, and the overuse of antibiotics and narcotics, always offering honest science in place of marketing malarkey.

Joanie explained that the show grew naturally out of who he was. "He loved teaching, and he loved medicine. He loved the one-on-one with his patients, but thought about a way to broaden the education," she said. "We started with a local radio show. Over the years, everything branched out into television, multiple radio shows, newspaper articles."

The Healing Words Foundation

To bring all of that work under one roof, Dr. Holm and Joanie founded the Healing Words Foundation, an educational platform devoted to medical literacy. Today its message reaches listeners and viewers throughout South Dakota and its neighboring states, and its Prairie Doc columns appear in 170 newspapers across the country.

Carrying on without Dr. Holm took more than one person. "We went from one Prairie Doc, Rick, who could work very diligently and do everything, to four Prairie Docs to make up for the one," Joanie said. These physicians, all still practicing full time, now rotate writing the weekly column and appearing across the foundation's media. Joanie laughed that they like to say they were strong-armed into it by Rick, "but it's all through love."

The family remains at the heart of the foundation as well. At Dave Hyink's suggestion, a Holm family member now sits on the board, beginning with their son Eric, with all four children taking a turn so someone is always there to ask whether a decision fits their father's mission. The Hopeful Spirit Chorale, the singing group Rick started and directed, also carries on, visiting nursing homes, hospital rooms, and homes to share music with anyone who could use a little hopeful spirit. "That legacy of Rick, well, I'd like to say love in action," Joanie said.

A Legacy That Lives On

Dr. Holm and Joanie raised four creative and caring children, Eric, Carter, Preston, and Julia. He counted reading aloud to them every night among his best experiences as a parent, and he taught them by example how to care for a spouse and for aging parents. Together, he and Joanie walked with both of their families through the dying process, and in his final years he was writing about how to care for an elderly parent, sharing what he had learned in his practice and at home.

Dr. Holm passed away in 2020, but the work he started continues to reach people every week through the radio, the television, the newspaper, and the voices of the Hopeful Spirit Chorale. As Joanie put it, his life showed his commitment through "all of the education that he put out," a legacy of love in action that still touches families across the prairie.

Learn more about Dr. Richard Holm's life and legacy here: https://sdexcellence.org/Richard_Holm_2016 

Watch the full interview with Joanie Holm to hear Dr. Holm's story.