Page 12 - Fall 2019 Castle MD

Portrait of Darin
Wright, MD
Sunday is family day for Darin Wright, MD, an otolaryngologist who joined Ko‘olau
Ear Nose and Throat last October as an affiliated Adventist Health Castle provider. These days, with six children ages 17 to 32 who are spread across the country – and sometimes across the globe – family day usually begins around 10 in the morning when the kids start calling in from their various time zones. The calls often continue well into the afternoon as Dr. Wright and Jacqueline, his wife of 33 years, get caught up with news from their children and six grandchildren.
“We try to stay involved in their lives,” explains Dr. Wright, the youngest of 6
siblings who grew up in a tight-knit family in northern Utah. When his children were young, the family enjoyed a lot of road trips together since travel by plane was expensive. Even when he took a job with a specialty group practice in Alaska, he and Jacqueline packed up the kids – four of them at the time, ages 2-11 – and turned the move into a 16-day adventure, driving from North Dakota up the Alaska Highway.
Later, after moving back to ‘the lower 48,’ states, Dr. Wright would often drive to medical conferences around the country. He now can boast that he’s visited every U.S. state except Mississippi and Arkansas and, not surprisingly, has developed a love for travel. Switzerland and Slovenia were some of his favorite foreign destinations, along with a recent visit to Machu Picchu to hike the Inca Trail with his youngest son after he graduated from high school with
a 4.0 GPA. To be fair, each of his children were rewarded with a special trip after high school.
Coming from a large family with modest financial means, education was highly valued. Dr. Wright’s father was a math teacher who encouraged his children to make the most of their college education. Dr. Wright knew from a young age that he wanted to be a doctor.
“My older brother wanted to be a family doctor and I wanted to be just like him, but perhaps a pediatrician,” he recalls. “I loved children, and still do.” That’s why his ENT practice has always been open to all ages, from newborns to nonagenarians.
He completed his undergraduate studies
at the University of Utah with a degree in bioengineering, “a fallback if I didn’t get into
med school.” But he did get into medical school on a coveted Regent Scholarship
at the University of California, San Diego, where an anatomy class roused his interest in the head and neck area. He went on to complete his surgical residency and ENT internship at State University of New York at Syracuse (driving from San Diego to Syracuse, of course).
Following a six-month fellowship at the University of Berne in Switzerland, Dr. Wright spent a year practicing in Alaska and five years in Vermont before settling
in with a multi-specialty group practice in Appleton, Wisconsin. He loved the small community, enjoyed rowing with an 8-man skull crew on the Fox River, and Jacqueline kept pace with the children and 1.5 acre
12 · FALL ‘19