Dr. Chuck Dietzen’s healing touch reaches across the world
Pediatric rehabilitation physician, missionary, not-for-profit founder, teacher and mentor. These are just a few descriptors of Dr. Charles Dietzen, known to most as “Dr. Chuck,” who resides on Main Street.
But the one word that describes him best is healer.
“If I was president, I would reinstitute the draft, but it wouldn’t be to train people to kill, it would be to train them to heal,” Dietzen said. “We were not all born to be doctors and nurses, but we were all born to be healers.”
His passion for healing started at a young age under an apple tree in his backyard where he would take care of animals in his makeshift vet clinic.
“I was a healer as a child. I had a gift with animals,” Dietzen said, although he also confessed, “I’m not so sure I was good at it because I also had a cemetery.”
He also had a gift with children and a unique opportunity to help them as his family fostered more than 150 children while he grew up with five siblings in his three-bedroom home in Kokomo.
Already accepted to vet school, he shifted gears with encouragement from his mother and later entered medical school, graduating in 1987 followed by a residency specializing in rehabilitation.
Another life changing moment came in March 1997 when he found himself in India working with nuns who discussed an opportunity to meet the Pope, but Dietzen had a different focus
“No offense, but Mother (Teresa) is first on my list,” he said.
He got his chance to meet both, but remembers moments before the meeting with the humble missionary the most.
“I was nervous, and I checked my pulse. It was 180 or 190, higher than when I was running with the bulls in Pamplona,” he said.
The 30-minute meeting did not disappoint as he sat next to “Mother” on a wooden bench soaking in her wisdom. One of her famous quotes remains taped to his mirror, “It’s not my job to be successful, it’s my job to be faithful.”
Upon returning to the states, his passion to heal following the example of Mother Teresa became the beginnings of the Timmy Foundation, now known as Timmy Global Health, named in memory of his brother, Timmy, who died as an infant.
Dietzen saw his new organization as a way to integrate needs by empowering and training youth, thereby empowering what he believes is everyone’s innate ability to heal.
“Here are students who want to be doctors and nurses and people who need help. Let’s put the two together.” Dietzen said. “So many people have the hearts to do it but don’t know how. They just need an invitation.”
What started with personal invitations by Dietzen to join him on mission trips in 1997 has today expanded into Timmy Global Health, which recently was awarded the $250,000 Chase Bank American Giving Award with seven programs in five countries, 11 full time staff members, 260 students traveling overseas on Timmy mission trips last year, and more than 45 Timmy Clubs in high schools and colleges.
Samantha Petrie is a junior who co-founded one of those clubs.
“Dr. Chuck has played an instrumental part in the decision to create the Zionsville High School Timmy Club,” Petrie said. “His courageous decision to do something to improve the health of our world has inspired me, as well as other club members, to follow his example of participating in something that can make a tangible difference in the world.”
Petrie also will be going to Guatemala this June to experience the impact the organization is having first-hand by serving the community and building safer stoves to improve respiratory health.
Dietzen believes that the choice to be exposed to those suffering and impoverished, like young Petrie and many others have made, results in a new perspective.
“Healing is a mutual thing. On every trip we take, volunteers will say that they got more out of it than they gained,” he said. “It gives you a whole new appreciation for life.”
