Sitka vet retires after over 50 years of serving his community via pro bono work
SITKA, Alaska (KTUU) - A Sitka veterinarian is retiring after more than 50 years of service to his community, where he essentially asked his clients to pay what they could.
At 80 years old, Burgess Bauder still has the entrepreneurial spirit but will no longer be the go-to vet in southeast Alaska.
From humble beginnings, he developed a love for science and animals at a young age.
“I thought about it probably from the time I was a pre-teen, 10 to 12, love animals, love medicine,” explained Burgess with a laugh. “How do you know you love medicine when you’re 12 years old? I have no idea. Let’s not go there, but I did. And I have looked in the rear-view mirror and have no regrets about where I’ve been.”
After school in Washington state, Burgess made his way to Sitka, Alaska. He knew he loved animals and science, but he also had compassion for the human spirit.
“[Growing up] I was basically trailer trash,” he said. “Upper-class trailer trash. But you know, socioeconomically ... it was my dad one time. I said, ‘Dad, can we get Susie Belle spayed?‘. And he said, ‘Burgess, we can’t afford it.’ And I said, ‘well, I’m gonna be a vet man and everybody’s going to be able to afford it,’ or words to that effect.”
“And I’m just trying to make good on my commitment to my father,” he added.
Burgess offered his work pro bono. If someone couldn’t afford a procedure, he would perform it for free. This was probably best highlighted by a story that took place Christmas Eve some years ago.
“I get this call from this nice lady,” he remembered. “And she says, ‘Doctor Bauder,’ — nobody calls me Doctor Bauder. But, ‘Doctor Bauder,’ she says, ‘my dog’s trying to have babies and can’t.‘”
Burgess asked the woman to meet him at his clinic. By the time she brought her dog to the clinic, Christmas Day had arrived. He had to perform an emergency C-section on the dog.
“I’m sure it’s even true in human OBGYN, but it’s certainly true in vet medicine,” Burgess explained. “When you hear that calf or the lamb, and they bleat, or the cat, kittens meow, or the puppies whine, when you hear that, you get a rush. And so I got 13 rushes that evening, and they all lived. The biggest C-section I ever did in my life, and they all lived.”
Burgess said he doesn’t like to profile people, but this woman didn’t look like she could afford the service he had just provided.
“She had one of these little change purses and she pulls it out of her purse,” he recalled. “This is where I’ll get teary... and she said, ‘Doctor Bauder, I don’t have much, but I’d like to do something,’ and I said, ‘it’s Christmas. Merry Christmas. It’s on the house,’ and I said, ‘Promise me you’ll find good homes,’ which she did.”
“And I just put the last one of those puppies down, I don’t know, two or three years ago, so they all found good homes,” he said.
So, how was he able to perform these services for so many years at affordable rates? Burgess said he would supplement his income by diving commercially. He was also a carpenter who built multiple homes and even the local lighthouse.
“I’ve had the good fortune of not having to pay a carpenter 100 bucks an hour. You know, I can do it and do it well,” Burgess said. “I only have to please myself with what I do building-wise, and I can make nice stuff so I don’t have ... I’ve always avoided debt service. If you don’t owe people a lot of money, you don’t have to work. You don’t have to have a tremendous income.”
But Burgess worked hard to ensure he could keep his vet services affordable.
“I commercially dived for about 45 years, and it was, for me, very lucrative,” he explained. “The harvest diving, commercial diving, back in the day, I dived 6 months a year and would do an occasional salvage job for somebody.”
He said he made three to four times as much money diving for sea cucumbers and geoducks than he did in medicine. But it was the medicine that gave him purpose.
So what’s next for Burgess?
“I’ve had the good fortune to live to be 80 in a family where nobody’s ever lived to be more than 76,“ he said. ”It seems like we have one of those... I have a time limit. Well, I’ve exceeded that time limit."
“And I have a condition, atrial FIB, which is the cardiovascular gift that keeps on giving,” Burgess said, discussing his health. “I have a couple of physical disabilities in that the medicine that I was given for the heart caused nerve damage.”
“In this time that I have, my intention is to get in the dive boat, which incidentally is named the Death Barge 4.5. We’re going to get in that and sail off in the sunset. Where you going? I don’t know.”
He might not know where he’s going, but he knows what he’ll be doing when he gets back.
“I don’t look like El Chapo or Pablo Escobar, but I’m the new drug dealer in town. I’m building a marijuana retail outlet,” Burgess said.
If you’re looking for a good read, check out “Animal Nature: A Portrait of Burgess Bauder,” by John Straley.
See a spelling or grammar error? Report it to web@ktuu.com
Copyright 2025 KTUU. All rights reserved.
