"Tireless in his advocacy for physicians and for our independence in the practice of our profession, he can sometimes be a bit curmudgeonly, but always with a solid dose of humor," says Jim Hay, MD, speaker of the California Medical Association House of Delegates, of Charles McElwee, MD. Dr. Hay bestowed on him the Gary F. Krieger Speaker's Recognition Award during October's House of Delegates meeting. "He is still, at 77, using that humor in his practice of orthopedics in Los Angeles."

The award honors the outstanding contributions of a non-officer and present or former delegate distinguished through years of service to the CMA and the House of Delegates. And Dr. McElwee, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon in Covina, has devoted decades to physician causes, as well as to patients in California and elsewhere in the United States. Despite that history, he says he was "totally" surprised to get the award.

In answering which was his favorite of the many medical association positions he held, Dr. McElwee's humor flashes to life. He names his chairmanship of the CMA Political Action Committee, although he has one wry reservation: "One time, they really fixed me up good! They gave a donation in my name, and I've been getting dinged for money by every politician on God's green Earth ever since."

In addition to holding the CALPAC chairmanship from 1995 to 1997, Dr. McElwee served as a member of its board of directors and its executive committee from 1991 to 2002. He was president of the Los Angeles County Medical Association from 1989 to 1990 and previously held every other officer role of the association. Further, he has served as a delegate or alternate delegate to the CMA House of Delegates since 1982 and to the American Medical Association House of Delegates since 1985. And he has been a CMA and LACMA member since 1964.

As LACMA president, Dr. McElwee "was very supportive of the idea that the medical staff controls the leadership of the medical staff, and that privileges are [also] controlled by the medical staff," says Ben Shwachman, MD, who works with Dr. McElwee in his Covina office and has long considered him a mentor. "He's been very influential in all the years in maintaining private-practice medicine. During the malpractice crisis, Dr. McElwee was on the LACMA council from this area and helped organize things with respect to the strike we had that led to MICRA. He was also involved in the organization and formation of the California Orthopedic Association that he became the president of at one point."

Dr. McElwee considers one of his biggest advocacy challenges to be fighting trial lawyers over MICRA in the 1980s. "They were raising a lot of money to get rid of MICRA ... but they were unsuccessful, thanks to [former Assembly Speaker] Willie Brown. He seems like an unlikely ally, but he was," he says. "That saved doctors in California multi-thousands of dollars in fees for malpractice insurance."

Although he has called a number of states and cities home, Dr. McElwee considers himself to hail from Missouri, which he pronounces like a native. When he was 7 years old, his family left the town of Louisiana, Mo., for New Jersey, and later for Philadelphia. "I've probably spent more time in Philadelphia than anyplace else," he says. He attended Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., but had to delay his medical education at Philadelphia's Temple University School of Medicine for a stint in the Air Force.

Harboring a strong dislike for Philadelphia's weather, Air Force Lt. McElwee and a friend in the service went on vacation to California, landing in Burbank in a B-25 on New Year's Day. "It was 82 degrees and clear as a bell, and I said, 'Oh my God, here's where I'm going to come,'" he says.

Dr. McElwee's medical education seems very seat-of-the-pants by today's standards. For one thing, Temple's School of Medicine was located in a rough part of Philadelphia. "A lot of shootings, a lot of knifings in the neighborhood--you get a lot of orthopedic work that way," he jokes. In about 1955, he started a two-year position doing obstetrical anesthesia, and as a medical student in 1957, he landed a job running "one of the busiest ERs in Philadelphia," he recalls. "Because of the malpractice situation, there's no way you could do that now, and it's too bad, because it was a fantastic experience." He interned at Sawtelle Veterans Hospital in Los Angeles and returned to Philadelphia for his orthopedics residency, but by 1963, he moved to Southern California permanently.

He quickly went into business in an orthopedics practice with three other doctors, and together they had the entire San Gabriel Valley to themselves. "It was very easy then," Dr. McElwee says. "There weren't as many orthopedic surgeons around, and we were extremely busy. We made a nice living, before all the managed care came in and raked the profits up."

Dr. McElwee has stopped practicing full time, but he puts in a couple days a week. "I have a lot of nice patients--they're older and still come around," he says fondly. "They have a lot of aches and pains, and they're fun to see. I don't make any money, but I enjoy what I do."