Coming from a family of nine children, Des Moines native Jamie Lawler decided to get financial help to help pay for medical school. He signed on with the U.S. Navy’s health professionals’ scholarship program, which committed him to a one-year internship with the Navy and another three years of service. After his service term was finished in 1998, he remained in the Navy as a reservist until 2002. Wanting to live closer to his family and his wife’s family in Omaha, Lawler, 37, moved back to the Midwest in 2004, first working in Nebraska before moving to Des Moines a few months ago to work as a vitreoretinal subspecialist for the Wolfe Eye Clinic. He and his wife, Angie, have four children.

Did you always intend to enter the military?

The Navy has a program where they will fund your medical education, and in turn, you become a Navy doctor for a while. My older brother, Matt, had done it, and I started looking into it during my first year of medical school. You pay back to Navy with a one-year internship and one year of service per year of funding. After medical school at Creighton [University], I was in the Navy for three years.

Did you know at the time what field of medicine you wanted to specialize in?

At that time, I wasn’t at all interested in ophthalmology, and I was doing my internship in anesthesia. On my carrier, none of the other docs on the ship wanted to do the eye exams, so I volunteered. I got an ophthalmology book and decided that I kind of liked it. I had a great chief petty officer, who was also a lab technician who could make glasses for me on the ship. He said he’d been looking for someone to do refractions with him, and we started an eye clinic once a week. That’s kind of how it took off.

Where did you travel during your time with the Navy?

When we were land-based, we were at (the now closed) Naval Air Station Cecil Field in Jacksonville, Fla. Before you go out on your six-month deployment, you go out on workups for several weeks. I went to an island off the coast of Puerto Rico for training exercises. When we went on our six-month deployment, it was a Mediterranean cruise. We hit 10 or 11 port visits in those six months. We went through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea and we went into the Persian Gulf.

How difficult was it to leave your wife and 8-month-old daughter at home?

It was tough those first couple of days, but everyone else – about 5,500 of us – was in the same boat, no pun intended.

What did you do after you completed your three years of “payback time” to the Navy?

In 1998, I left active duty and stayed as a reservist for another four years. I moved about 70 miles down the road from Jacksonville to Gainesville, Fla., where I did my residency. I finished my residency in 2002.

What happened in 2002 to make you retire from the reserves?

I wanted to go into retina, and if you want to practice retina, most people will go do a fellowship. I moved to Houston, Texas and did my fellowship for two years. I was too busy as a fellow to keep up with the reserve requirements to be in the Navy, so I retired my reserve commission.

Do you miss your days in the Navy?

I’d do it again in a heartbeat. If my wife would let me go back in the Navy right now, my partner at Wolfe Clinic, Dave Saggau, and I would probably have a heart-to-heart talk. Being in the Navy, I got to fly in everything the Navy flies off the carrier. I got to experience flight ops on a daily basis. You got to essentially stand in the shadows of these individuals who provide for us every day. I miss wearing the uniform. I miss the camaraderie, and I miss the environment of being at a naval hospital and the respect that you get and the respect that you give out to your superiors.

Was it your plan all along to come back to Iowa at some point after you finished your education?

We were trying to. Most of the eight kids in my family – we lost a brother, Mike, in 2004 – are relatively in close proximity to Des Moines. We wanted to get back because my wife’s family is in Omaha and I have friends here and one brother who lives here now. But Des Moines wasn’t looking for a retina specialist in 2004, when I completed my fellowship. I accepted a job offer in Scottsbluff, Neb., a town of about 14,000 on the Wyoming border.

What was it like to move to a rural area after living in Houston?

It was a huge change for me, leaving Houston, with about 4.5 million to 14,000 people, but there are facets of it that I miss terribly. It was rural medicine. You go to these real small towns to see patients, and they are just so appreciative that they don’t have to drive five hours to see somebody. I even made house calls in Valentine, Neb., and it was great. You make those patient bonds and it was very rewarding.

Now that you’ve made it back to Des Moines, is it what you had hoped it would be?

Des Moines has changed dramatically since I was growing up here. It’s such a great city. It’s nice to be able to raise my family here, and I’m grateful that we were able to get my kids into the same school that I went to when I was young, Sacred Heart. We’re here to stay.