GARLAND COUNTY CORONER
501-622-3638
Dr. Gene Shelby, a board certified emergency physician, has been practicing emergency medicine in Hot Springs for over 23 years. In addition to caring for emergency department patients, he also is the Medical Director of the Emergency Department at National Park Medical Center in Hot Springs. Dr. Shelby has also served as the Garland county Coroner since January, 2001. He was recently elected President of the Arkansas Coroners Association and chosen to represent coroners on the Board of Directors of the Arkansas Association of Counties. He has also been involved in the care of hospice patients since 1993 when he became Medical Director of the Department of Health Regional Hospice Program. He continues to serve in that capacity. Dr. Shelby has been caring for patients from Garland and surrounding counties with HIV/AIDS since 1992. He has a monthly clinic at the Hot Springs AIDS Resource Center. Born to Ralph and Nita Shelby on January 8, 1951 in Muskogee, Oklahoma. He grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas and graduated fourth in a class of over 700 from Little Rock Central High School in May, 1969. He then attended Princeton University and received a bachelors degree in chemistry in May, 1973. He returned to Little Rock to study medicine and received his M.D. from the University of Arkansas School of Medicine in May, 1977. After an internship in Texas, Dr. Shelby practice emergency medicine in North Little Rock for a year while awaiting an opening in the Peace Corps. He then lived in Kinshasa, Zaire for two and a half years where he served as the Peace Corps Medical Officer for Zaire and Rwanda. Soon after returning from Africa, Dr. Shelby began his practice of Emergency medicine in Hot Springs where he has made his home since 1985. He was married for 15 years to Katherine L. Baker, LCSW, ACSW who had a private practice of psychotherapy in Hot Springs. Regrettably, she died after a courageous battle with metastatic lung cancer on September 14, 2005. His parents still live in Little Rock as do his sisters and their spouses, Jo Anne and John Mills, and Tina and Randy Cooper.