Don Bouchard — doctor, deacon and disciple

It’s a rare block of uninterrupted time on Don Bouchard’s calendar when we sit down together at Catholic Charities Diocese of Kalamazoo’s offices. The busy physician not only guides the agency as its Executive Director, but he also runs his six-year-old practice, Holy Family Healthcare, and serves in his diaconate ministry for St. Augustine Cathedral Parish, Kalamazoo. It’s a demanding schedule that keeps him busy with stops all around Southwest Michigan, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.
 
It’s also a life he didn’t exactly envision for himself. Don is a long way from his self-described humble upbringing in rural Maine.
 
“We were poor,” he says simply, “we didn’t have running water in my home until I was about 10 and the expectations for my future weren’t very high.”
 
However, it was his love of helping people, rooted in his working at a fire department in high school, along with the encouragement of his community college professor who kept raising the bar on those expectations, that led to where he is now.
 
“Most people laughed when I told them I wanted to be a doctor, but not Connie Holden,” remembers Don when describing the support of his Bangor (Maine) Community College professor. When he told Connie his plan of becoming a paramedic, not only did she not laugh but she said, “why not be a doctor?”
 
So he did. He graduated from the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine (with Connie “hooding at my graduation ceremony,” he laughs) and was accepted to Michigan State University’s Pediatric Residency program, which had a one-year pediatrics concentration. And Don loved it.
 
He was living the dream. He met the love of his life, his wife, Theresa, while she was the night charge nurse at Sparrow Hospital. Together they raised their two children, a son and a daughter, had a beautiful home and could afford nice cars and luxury vacations.
 
But something was missing.
 
“I remember distinctly coming home one day, getting out of my nice car, walking into my big house and hearing this voice — ‘you’re a long way from home.’”
 
Don interpreted that lingering phrase to refer to his Midwest location being far from his Maine
roots and dismissed it.
 
“I convinced myself, I can afford to fly home [to Maine] anytime. But I came to discover — that
voice was God and home was my faith.”
 
Don was climbing the corporate ladder and being groomed for an executive position in hospital
administration as he continued to hear that voice.
 
It was around this time when, as he was undergoing spiritual direction with the late Msgr. William “Fitz” Fitzgerald, a fateful work meeting occurred, sending him on a path that would change his life.
 
“The legal department [of his employer] was reviewing a new policy being instituted on dealing with uninsured patients,” he says. The policy was to turn them away. Don was outraged, a reaction he expressed at the meeting.
 
“I remember leaving that meeting, calling my wife Theresa and telling her, ‘I’m pretty sure I just got myself fired.’”
 
His departure from the hospital was a blessing, according to Don, and it set him on a course that he and Theresa had been contemplating for awhile. With two grown children, the Bouchards had already been discerning downsizing and were eager to incorporate more of their Catholic faith into their lives.
 
Additionally, and at the encouragement of Msgr. Fitz, Don began to study for the diaconate and was ordained in 2017. He was assigned to St. Augustine Cathedral, where today he’s likely to be found serving at Mass, participating in Eucharistic Adoration each Saturday and taking Holy Communion to parishioners unable to get to Mass. But not preaching.
 
“I preach through my actions and interactions,” he says.
 
In addition to pursuing his vocation to the Diaconate, Don set himself on a course to overcome the internal crisis he was having with practicing medicine not healthcare.
 
But aren’t those things the same?
 
Not at all, explains Don. “Healthcare is addressing all the needs of the person — educational, social, mental and spiritual. I ask patients what do you need — sometimes it’s a mattress or sometimes it might be a pair of work shoes.”
 
Addressing all a person’s needs, with an approach rooted in Catholic social teaching, is the driving mission behind his practice, Holy Family Healthcare. The practice was born almost six years ago with a mobile unit and an initial plan to assist the migrant farmworker community.
 
“I thought it would be a summertime thing,” says Don. “But what I came to realize is that not all migrants migrant — they just move to a different housing situation in many cases. So, I had many of them asking me where I was going to be in the winter months.”
 
So after a few stops in temporary quarters, the practice settled into the former Red Cross building in Hartford.
 
And it’s the healthcare mission that explains why Holy Family Healthcare has a food pantry that distributed 20,000 pounds of food last year and a clothing closet for the entire family completely free of charge. It’s also why the practice underwrites the Catholic school education of 17 Hispanic/Latino students with the hopes of expanding that support to more students.
 
It’s clear after speaking with Don for just a few minutes that he’s quick to identify needs but always with a solution in mind.
 
It’s also that drive to serve in every aspect that made him a viable candidate for the Executive Director position at Catholic Charities Diocese of Kalamazoo.
 
“I meant what I said at my interview [for that position],” he explains. “And that is that I believe there are so many Catholics in our Diocese that want to help but don’t know the how and the where.”
 
And Don’s putting his MBA to work incorporating some processes that will help make those connections — between needs, volunteers and clients — all come together.
 
Recently he instituted a new database program that details all the on-hand inventory of goods that are available.
 
This way, he explains, if there’s a St. Vincent De Paul chapter, for example in the Southern part of the diocese, and they have a client who’s lost everything to a house fire — they can come along and show them what’s on hand and get that problem solved.
 
“How can we help others as well as ourselves be better servants — that’s what it’s really all about.”
 
“It’s based on relationship,” continues Don who hopes to realize the vision of expanding the agencies reach into every corner of the Diocese by working more in collaboration with the good works already done by the parishes as well as local St. Vincent DePaul chapters as well as the Knights of Columbus.
 
Currently he’s working on a volunteer network database to match volunteers with available work needed. It’s first being piloted with the Caring Closet program at Caring Network with the goal of then expanding it to Holy Family Healthcare and eventually to the rest of the diocese. This would allow for volunteers to register and be able to choose where to help.
 
So where does the line of Holy Family Healthcare end and Catholic Charities begin?
 
“Hopefully for the client and patient, it’s seamless,” says Don who adds, “Those are human-made divisions. We’re here to help everyone.”
 
It’s a mission he takes to heart with his staff as well, as they start each day in prayer, combing through the “Book of Intentions” he keeps at both Holy Family Healthcare and now at Catholic Charities.
 
After a recent board retreat Don and his staff chose a patron saint for the agency, the Holy Family.
 
“That’s why we’re here, to build strong families. And we, as a Church, can do a better job of calling on the communion of saints. We can stand on their shoulders and see our future — it’s certain to be a better view.”