FOLEY, Ala. — Dr. Richard Hightower, a chiropractic physician, didn’t come to medicine early. He was first a lieutenant in the Army, serving in Saigon.

“I went with the ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) in college,” he said. “It helped pay for school.”

After leaving Vietnam, he returned to the Midwest and taught science.

Tired of shoveling snow, he talked with his wife, Judy, about where they could go, and after applying to many schools in the South, the Fort Pierce, Fla. school system responded. It was the only school system to do so, and Hightower went for an interview.

“They were showing me where my desk would be, where everything was,” said Hightower. “I was wondering what was up.” He asked, and learned that the school system had just been integrated and there had been trouble in the schools.

Hightower settled in and taught chemistry. And a new love (nothing that threatened Judy) began to enter his life — photography. He started taking photos “as a sideline,” and eventually he, “hired partners.”

That lead to a career as a photographer.

“We did everything from studio to Little League,” said Hightower. “You got to go to the richest places and to the poorest places.”

And he learned something that most professional photographers know — it’s the photographer and not the camera.

“I told people that you could use an Instamatic to take good pictures,” Hightower said. He pointed out he proved that when he came across a friend’s wedding after going SCUBA diving. There was a problem with the photographer the couple had hired, and it looked like there would be no photos of the occasion.

“I had my underwater camera and took pictures,” said Hightower.

Running a photography business had its rewards.

“There was the excitement of not knowing where you were going to be. People would come in and want you to do almost anything. You were always asking yourself what you could do to make that person happy?”

And that SCUBA diving? It turned out to be fun, and Hightower became the author of a fun and useful booklet called, “Everything You Wanted to Know About the Spiny Lobster.” The spiny lobster is a wily (but not too smart) beast found in warm waters. It’s also delicious when prepared properly, so catching them is both joy and frustration for divers.

But, after 20 years as a photographer, Hightower told his wife, “I've reached all the goals here.”

“I told her I was thinking about chiropractic,” he said.

To him, the choice was not surprising. His mother had taken him to a chiropractor as a boy, and the combination of science and helping people made the profession attractive to him. He applied to Sherman College of Chiropractic in Spartanburg, S.C.

“They accepted most of my credits,” said Hightower. Still he relished taking a few prerequisite classes at a nearby community college “just to make sure my brain was still alive.”

After graduation, he discovered that Florida requirements “would make it one year wait before I hung out my shingle.”

His son, Shane, who was stationed in Mobile at the time, suggested the he look in Baldwin County.

“We loved it,” said Hightower. He’s been in Foley for 11 years now.

“I’ve never had a day where I hate to go to work,” he said. “You are going to help somebody today and that is a good feeling.”