Dr. Richard Rutland Jr., who was instrumental in the founding of the College of Community Health Sciences and who provided early leadership for its family medicine residency, died Jan. 12, 2026, at his home with his family by his side.
Rutland grew up in Eufaula, Ala. He was an early faculty member at CCHS and practiced for years in Fayette, Ala. He was devoted to improving family medicine training and increasing the delivery of quality health care to the rural citizens of Alabama.
During a 2012 interview for the College’s 40th anniversary, he said: “I came into this world knowing that I wanted to be a doctor.” He said his inspiration came from his own family physician, whom Rutland described as a “true, old-fashioned family doctor. Because of his warmth, his caring and his love of medicine, I decided that I, too, wanted to become a physician.”
Rutland attended The University of Alabama for a year before joining the V-12 Navy College Training Program. He completed his premedical studies at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and was accepted into the Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, graduating in 1949. He completed an internship at the Jefferson Hillman Hospital in Birmingham, Ala., and then began two years of active duty in the Navy. Afterward, he completed a general practice residency in California and Colorado and in 1954 began his practice in Fayette, Ala.
His practice included obstetrics and surgery, and he later established clinics in the rural Alabama towns of Berry and Kennedy and began a cardiac rehab program in Fayette County, serving as its first medical director.
Prior to the establishment of CCHS, Rutland was one of only a handful of physicians who made their practices available for preceptorships to medical students desiring a family medicine experience. He was encouraged by the 1969 release of the Meeting the Challenge of Family Practice report and began making trips to Tuscaloosa to meet with medical leaders and garner support for a family practice training program.
The report was authored by Dr. William R. Willard, who chaired the American Medical Association committee that produced it. As a member of the search committee for a founding dean for CCHS, Rutland helped convince Willard to come out of retirement, after completing a long tenure as dean of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine and assist the fledgling Tuscaloosa residency program gain its footing. In turn, Willard persuaded Rutland to become an acting director of the College’s new Family Practice Residency, a position he held from 1974-75.
“I had been dreaming about this type of training when I was studying to become a doctor,” Rutland said in the 2012 interview.
He received numerous honors at the local, state and national levels during his professional career, and for his tireless work in family medicine and, especially, rural medicine. He was chosen Family Doctor of the Year in 1981, with the award presented at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C.