Henry A. Lile, M. D. The medical profession is one which offers a wide field for the ambitious men of today, affording unusual opportunities for individual ability and intellectual gifts, and an Oklahoman who has already gained more than a local reputation especially as a surgeon is Dr. Henry A. Lile, for many years in practice at Aline, where he founded and is proprietor of the Lile’s Hospital at Aline. Through his zeal, comprehensive knowledge and inherent talent, Doctor Lile has won the confidence of the residents of his section and has a large and representative practice.

It is his distinction to have come into the world in one of the typical Kansas residences of forty years ago, a dugout in Barton County, where he was born May 6, 1874, the first white male child born in that county. His parents were George and Mary Jane (Ferryman) Lile. His father was born in 1844 at Richmond, Illinois, his parents being natives of the same locality, became a farmer, and in 1871 removed to Kansas, locating as one of the first permanent settlers on a Government homestead in Barton County. For several years he and his family lived in a dugout, and while carrying on his operations as a pioneer farmer, he also hunted and killed the Buffalo which were still to be found in great numbers on the plains of Kansas. He was struck by lightning and killed on his farm near Great Bend in the same year that his son Doctor Lile was born. The mother of Doctor Lile, who married George Lile in 1869, was born at Richmond, Illinois, in 1849, and by her first marriage had two children, the daughter being Lena. She was born May 20, 1872, was educated at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, where she graduated in music, and for a number of years was a teacher in her native state until her marriage in 1897 to George Steele of Spearville, Kansas, where they now reside, and have two children, Opal and Lile. Doctor Lile’s mother was married in 1877 to N. P. Smith, who was also a pioneer of Barton County, settling there in 1869, and is now a resident at Pawnee Rock. By this marriage there are four children: Edwin G., Garfield, Blaine and Earl Smith.

Barton County was still a new section of Kansas while Doctor Lile was growing to manhood. His early associations were those of a farm, and in 1893, at the age of nineteen, he graduated from the high school at Pawnee Rock. He then attended the Central Normal at Great Bend, and in 1896 entered the Barnes Medical College at St. Louis, where he was graduated M. D. in 1899. Returning to his home town at Pawnee Rock, he practiced there a short time, but during the same year removed to Oklahoma, locating for a time at the now extinct Village of Carwille, and in 1901 removed to Aline, which Tias been his home for the past fifteen years. He possessed not only ability, but energy and a high degree of faithfulness in looking after his duties as a physician and surgeon, and soon had more than he could individually attend to. To gain facilities commensurate with the requirements of his large private practice he erected in 1907 a modern hospital at Aline, and in 1915 remodeled it on a larger plan and has now a large brick building, well arranged and furnished and with all the necessary equipment and system for modern hospital work. He now confines his practice to surgery, diagnosis and hospital work, and has performed a number of delicate and major operations. One that attracted especial attention was performed in 1915 at the Aline Hospital when he removed from one of his patients a tumor weighing 109 pounds.

Doctor Lile has interrupted his private practice a number of times for the purpose of pursuing postgraduate studies. At different times he has attended the National University of Arts and Sciences at St. Louis, the Illinois Post-Graduate School of Medicine in Chicago, the Barnes University at St. Louis, and the Tulane University at New Orleans. He is now serving as consulting surgeon for the Alfalfa County Hospital at Cherokee.

Doctor Lile was first married in 1899 to Alta French. In 1901 he married Etta M. Miller, who died in 1901. On March 22, 1902, he married Laura M. Huston, who was born in Illinois in 1885. Doctor Lile is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason, and is worshipful master of Orient Lodge No. 190, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, at Aline, He stands high in medical organizations, has served as president and secretary of the Alfalfa County Medical Society, is a member of the Oklahoma State Society and the American Medical Association, and during territorial days was coroner for Woods County eight years, beginning in 1900, and was the only man ever elected to any office in that county for a longer period than two successive terms.