The Good Doctor

In October 2019, Dr. William “Murray” Buttner ’85 was standing outside the airport near his home in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, preparing to send his daughter off for the weekend. It was then that he saw an incoming aircraft miss its landing, careen off the runway, and skid toward the water. Within minutes, Buttner was inside the downed plane, where he tended to the only critically injured passenger on board, a man who’d been hit by the propeller after it crashed into the cabin.

 

Just weeks before, Buttner had traveled to Wisconsin to complete the Comprehensive Advanced Life Support (CALS) class, a series of trainings that guide physicians and first responders in critical lifesaving care in the most remote environments. As the chaos of the scene unfolded around him, Buttner was able to focus strictly on his patient, a young father who ultimately died from his injuries.

 

Amid the heartbreak, however, the experience proved validating for Buttner. “I was able to put to use what I’d learned,” he says. The event highlighted the many different roles a family doctor such as Buttner has to play in a place like Dutch Harbor, a rural community located 800 miles from Anchorage along the Aleutian Chain.

 

“I knew some of the people on the plane,” says Buttner, who began working in Alaska in 1997 and is co-medical director of Dutch Harbor’s Iliuliuk Family and Health Services clinic. “We don’t have the number of emergencies that a big city does, but we do have emergencies — ATV accidents, snow machine accidents, moose stompings. It’s not like a bigger city hospital where you’ll see someone after they’ve been seen by an emergency crew. You’re often the first person — or the only person — [to direct care].”

 

Within days after the plane crash, Buttner began collaborating with different state medical organizations to bring the CALS training to Alaska. The following May, dozens of healthcare providers from 15 rural locations across the state came to Anchorage and completed the course. More trainings are on the docket, including plans to bring them directly to small communities like Buttner’s own.

 

For that work and for his many years as a doctor in Alaska, Buttner was named a 2021 Community Star by the National Organization of State offices of Rural Health. The award goes to one healthcare provider in each state.

 

“It was really nice to get because I truly love being a rural family doctor,” says the 55-year-old.

 

That fact that this Easton, Connecticut, native is doing it so far from home is a surprise — and it’s not. Buttner, who did his undergraduate work at Yale and earned his medical degree from Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, found his calling while working as a young doctor at New York City’s St. Vincent’s hospital during the height of the AIDS epidemic.

 

“It was patient-oriented work, like a family practice,” he says. “I felt like I was making a difference.”

 

And he didn’t want to give it up. Over the next several years, Buttner worked in several other locations — New Mexico, India, back in Connecticut — before finding a permanent home in his wife’s native Alaska. He hasn’t spent a second regretting the move. For Buttner, the work, the life, and the people he’s met are everything he wanted from his medical career.

 

“I’m making an impact,” says Buttner, the father of two teenagers. “You feel very alive out here. We’re out in the middle of nowhere and every week I look around and just think, ‘I can’t believe I get to live and work out here.’ It’s incredible.”