Dr. Chuck Dietzen joyfully
helps “Pint-Sized Prophets”
wrestle with big challenges

  Many people recognize Dr. Chuck Dietzen as a renowned pediatrician who practices maverick medicine, employing science and medical training with supplemental doses of joyful inspiration and humor as he helps children battle through illnesses, injuries and disabilities with a specialty in pediatric rehabilitation.

Others know him as the servant-leader who founded Timmy Global Health, whose goal is to help international communities who lack the healthcare resources many of us take for granted in the United States to empower themselves toward better health outcomes. It was named for a Dietzen’s brother who died in infancy, a brother he never met.

His work has garnered much attention and major awards. In February of this year, he was honored with the Servant’s Heart Award for Healthcare by The People Helping People Network, which counts Timmy Global Health among its partners in the HOPE Equation (Housing + Hunger Relief + Healthcare + Education x Faith = HOPE). That was followed this past Friday by Kiwanis International awarding him its World Service Medal, whose past winners have included the likes of Mother Teresa, Audrey Hepburn, Heifer International, Sir Roger Moore and First Ladies Nancy Reagan and Rosalynn Carter, among others.

“Dr. Chuck is a remarkable man of faith and a deep-rooted desire to serve those in need,” People Helping People founder Jeff Cardwell says of the doctor. “His heart for serving others often surpassing our understanding, exemplifying a level of servant leadership that is remarkably rare.”

That’s high praise for a man that many children know as “Dr. Doom” — a role in which he has suffered unprecedented consecutive losses in the wrestling ring as part of the Timmy Takedown.

“Someone once said to me that I’m like the Washington Generals against the Harlem Globetrotters,” Dietzen says with a laugh. “That’s a good way of putting it.”

Recently, though, he finally broke that string of losses. He did it the same way he loses in the ring — with complete joy. (Keep reading for the explanation.) But before you can understand the method behind the madness of the Timmy Takedown’s “Dr. Doom” you have to understand Timmy Global Health’s “Dr. Chuck.”

“PINT-SIZED PROPHETS”

The seeds of service were planted in Dietzen’s heart at an early age.

“The thing that my parents taught us is that we’re here to live for others and to share with others,” he says. “We had 150 foster kids over 20 years. Whenever people ask me if I felt cheated because there were so many other kids and my parents didn’t have all the time to pay attention just to me, I tell them I just learned to count my blessings. It was a great way to grow up. It was a great way to learn how to look after others.

“We were changing diapers and feeding babies bottles when we were 7 and 8 years old,” he recalls. “It was great, and I remember us almost fighting among ourselves who was going to give up their bed or bedroom or chest of drawers for a child that was coming in. We all felt that way. We didn’t feel cheated at all.”

His love for children made pediatrics a natural path to follow in medicine. Yet, he wondered if that love could be an obstacle and not allow him to properly confront the most difficult challenges children could face and health battles some might ultimately lose. Yet, as he relates in his book “Pint-Sized Prophets,” those little subjects of concern would become his spiritual leaders.

“When a child dies and gets resuscitated and looks at you and says, ‘I died and I met Jesus and He hugged me and told me it wasn’t my time to die,’ that gets your attention,” Dietzen says. “The irony is that was one of my great fears about becoming a doctor — how would I survive children dying. And, lo and behold, the greatest work I’ve done is to walk that edge of life and death with my heroes, my spiritual leaders.”

Moments like those have taken him from worrying that his faith might be tested to knowing that his faith has been validated.

“I’ve been very blessed to be the caregiver of my spiritual leaders,” he says. “Although they took me to a place that I feared, as I’ve said to many people, they’ve taken me from faith to fact that I’ll get to meet them again. I’ll get to see them again after this life. It’s been a very rewarding and life-affirming journey for me.”

Those affirmations are not just internal. They have come from those witnessing his work, as well.

“There’s a synergy that those kids and I have. I remember a mother of a child with cerebral palsy said to me, ‘Dr. Chuck, are you aware of the energy in that room when you’re with my son?’ I said, ‘Yes, I’m very aware.’ I pray for that. I do sense it.”

It also helps him explain recoveries that others have labeled “miraculous.”

“When I was asked years ago by a reporter about recoveries that were considered miraculous, I said, ‘Well, I ask Jesus to round with me every day.’”

IN GOOD COMPANY

When People Helping People founder Jeff Cardwell informed him that he was to receive the Servant’s Heart Award for Healthcare, Dietzen was surprised. Then came news of Kiwanis’ World Service Medal. He says the timing seemed unusual considering how the Covid outbreak had slowed his international travels.

“I feel like I personally, out of necessity and limited by the pandemic, I feel like I’ve been doing less the last couple of years and all of the sudden these awards started flowing in,” he says. “If you’re living your passion and you’re doing what God put you here to do, these things just follow in your wake. I was very, very touched by the Servant’s Heart Award because founder Jeff knows what my true motive is for my work.”

Knowing that the Kiwanis World Service Medal also has been bestowed upon Nobel Peace Prize recipient Mother Teresa, whom he once had the honor of meeting, made this past Friday night’s presentation particularly emotional — especially since Timmy Global Health was founded 25 years ago in 1997, the same year this world lost Mother Teresa.

“When I read Mother’s name, I choked back tears,” Dietzen says. “It’s very, very important to me when I hear Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity — thats the kind of company I like to run with. I just think we need more examples and more spiritual mentors like Mother Teresa in the world.”

The People Helping People Network’s partnership with Timmy Global Health makes sense, Dietzen says, because both organizations are not just about helping people but about empowering them to help themselves.

“This world, this life is about empowerment,” he says. “I’ve joked with Jeff that I wish I’d named my organization People Helping People because people get locked into this idea of what a mission is, and I just like the idea of people helping people. It’s whatever I can do to help you, whatever resources I have, I’m willing to share them. What gives anything value is the ability to share it.

“Just as the children inspire me, there’s a synergy there, I think the same is true among organizations,” he adds. “Organizations are made up of individuals. It’s quite flattering, humbling and quite an honor to receive awards from organizations like that.

Dietzen has worked in a total of 27 different countries, and Timmy Global Health currently works in four countries — Ecuador, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Nigeria. While some nonprofits parachute into a situation and try to dictate how best to help a community, Dietzen believes in going where help is asked for and where he can leave people pointed in the right direction to help themselves.

“When people ask how I end up there, I say I was invited,” he says. “It’s important to me that they want us to interact with them. But it is always about empowering the local people so that they can deliver the local services themselves. Of course, these are very, very limited resource locations.”

NOW, ABOUT “DR. DOOM”

Sports have always played a key role in Dietzen’s life. He was playing semi-pro football and had turned down a contract to play pro football in Europe when he continued his medical pursuits with a residency at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, where UAB had started a club football team that would later evolve into a full-fledged competitive college football team. Dietzen was UAB’s first quarterback. He also has played the rough-and-tumble sport of rugby for 40 years.

But he has a special connection with wrestling — legitimate amateur wrestling and the professional spectacle. He was an amateur wrestler in high school, as well as on Junior Olympic and AAU teams. He then spent about five years in the 1990s as a “bad guy” on professional wrestling circuits.

Today, he stages Timmy Takedown events where he “wrestles” the very children he helps rehabilitate in spectacles complete with masks, wrestling ropes, referees and boisterous fans cheering on the kids. Wrestling as Dr. Doom, Dietzen has become quite used to losing in spectacular fashion.

How does he explain this event to people hearing about it for the first time?

“I say, ‘Well, we get the kids out of their wheelchairs, and we throw them around,’” he says with a laugh. “So, it’s impossible to explain this to people. I joke that we did the first one in Kentucky because the laws are a little more lax.”

He insists he has the best vantage point for these events, albeit flat on his back by the end of each match.

“We set the stage for children with disabilities to showcase their abilities,” he insists. “I have to admit that at some level I’m kinda selfish because all of the other doctors and young people that work with me to do that show, we get the best seats in the house. To hear what those kids say and to see them stick their chests out excited about putting on a show, it’s the greatest opportunity to see the human spirit and to see love personified. It’s just such a cool, cool event.”

It was bound to happen, though — Dr. Doom prevailing and, yes, defeating a young man with autism.

“This is not as well known because I’ve lost about 862 consecutive matches, but in the last one we did in Carmel, Indiana, this one kid, a teenager who has autism, he insisted, insisted, that I win — that I pin him and win,” Dietzen explains. “Afterwards, he came up to me and goes, ‘OK, you got what you want, now I need to get what I want — and that’s $25.’ I was laughing and actually took out $25 cash and gave it to him. I looked at his mom and dad and then looked back at him and said, ‘You understand the business, my friend!’”

The Timmy Takedown is just an extension of his love for children and his drive to make the world a better place to live for everyone.

“I have the greatest respect and love for these kids and their families,” he says. “It’s just a wonderful mission. I’m so thankful this is where God put me to make that visible to others. It’s faith, hope and love. It’s those three things. There’s just nothing better than to see a child who has a disability get their moment in the limelight. And it helps us who don’t struggle with those issues to realize how unimportant some things are that we put so much emphasis on in our lives.”

Watch Dr. Chuck’s TEDx talk on “Maverick Medicine” from 2016 …