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The Time Capsules stories are prepared by
Bob Brinkman - Texas Historical Commission
TIME CAPSULE – JUN 1894
Dr. Dick Boling Gregg,
Throughout the years, Round Rock has been fortunate to boast citizens of strong character and longtime devotion to their town. Such a man was Dr. Dick Boling Gregg, who served as Round Rock’s town doctor for 42 years. Dr. Gregg was born in Manor in 1894. His father, Dr. Richard Gregg, was also a country doctor who died and left his son fatherless at three. The younger Gregg attended schools in Manor and Bryan, then the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated from the medical branch at Galveston and interned at Robert B. Green Hospital in San Antonio. During World War I he served as a private in the Army Medical Corps. In 1921 Dr. Gregg came to Round Rock, following in the footsteps of his father as a small-town general practitioner. In 1926 Dr. Gregg married Zelma Preslar, a schoolteacher at Round Rock who grew up in Florence. In his early practice he also served as Missouri Pacific Railroad doctor at Round Rock. In this capacity, he had the sad task of attending to the dead and injured of the Baylor bus crash in 1927. Dr. Gregg ministered the injured on the train ride to Taylor, the nearest hospital at the time.
In a biography written by Mrs. Gregg, she credits the Doctor as delivering babies, pulling teeth (Round Rock had no dentist for years), listening as counselor and making house calls day or night.
Dr. Gregg provided free service for patients who could not afford the help, including the Trinity Lutheran Orphans’ Home and Home for the Aged, and the Texas Baptist Children’s Home. Dr. Gregg also learned Spanish to help care for the elderly Mexican-American community. Dr. Gregg also served his community through the school board, Masonic lodge, Palm Valley Lutheran Church, plus the American and Texas Medical Associations and Williamson County Medical Society. When Dr. Gregg died in 1963 the Ex-Students Association presented a Memorial Resolution for “one who for so many years devoted his precious time and energy to his community…and one who was cherished and loved by all his friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens, and who helped to mold out little town of Round Rock into the growing community it is today – our own beloved Dr. D. B. Gregg”. In 1979 the Palm House was moved to Main Street next to Dr. Gregg’s red brick office, and his friends dedicated a marker there in his honor.