About The Academy

Our Mission Statement

• To foster, promote and provide high quality education in the visual and performing arts in the greater Bedford community.
• To strive to promote collaboration and cooperation among community art providers to best identify and serve the art needs of the community.

Our History

The Founder: John D Bower, MD FACP

For nearly forty years, Dr. Bower has helped people in most all medical fields available, as a teacher and physician. He has also helped the Academy with the donation of the Bower Center. His request upon donation was that it be used for the cultural arts for the community. His generosity and selflessness started as a young man.

Dr. Bower's career began as a typical medical student and in 1957, he was first exposed to hemodialysis for kidney transplants. A few years later in 1962, he was sent to Seattle, Washington to learn the process of hemodialysis from Dr. Belding Scribner and his staff.

After completing several fellowships at the University of Virginia and the Medical College of Virginia, he began his career at the Veteran's hospital in Jackson, Mississippi in the mid 1960's. His plans were to practice medicine and research kidney diseases, such as hypertension, in one of the poorest states in the nation. His direction took an almost immediate turn, but stayed in the same medical neighborhood.

In 1966 he received one of the first Public Health service grants to research the theory of the therapeutic efficiency of hemodialysis. Three years later when the grant expired, his findings were conclusive: Without hemodialysis, patients died and those who received it lived. After a lengthy education of Congress, Medicare was modified to include End Stage Renal disease, also referred to as chronic kidney failure.

Dr. Bower founded Kidney Care Inc., a non-profit corporation in 1973. Kidney Care grew into 28 dialysis units in three states, treating over 1800 patients and staffing more than 750 medical professionals. In 1996 Dr. Bower became a founding member of the Renal Care Group when he merged Kidney Care with several other dialysis facilities. The group is traded on the NYSE after a move from NASDAQ. All proceeds from the market transfer went to the Bower Foundation which is 100% committed to improvement of the quality of life and health care in Mississippi.

Dr. Bower is also an open supporter of a single payer nationwide health care program. To seek a solution to the health care problems of this country, he became a member and was later elected to the board of directors of the Physicians for National Health Program (PNHP), which now stands at 13,000 member physicians that also support the same endeavor.

Since retiring from the Department of Medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in 2000, Dr. Bower and Edna Curry spend their time in Branson, MS with their children and 13 grandchildren. Their other focus is directed at developing home hemodialysis and philanthropy through the Bower Foundation. Dr. Bower's passionate pursuit of a single payer National Health Program still thrives in both his namesake foundation and the PNHP. Their firm belief is access to health care is an inalienable right NOT a commodity to be bought and sold.

Board of Directors

• Richard Thomas, President
• Amy Carter, Executive Director
• Wm. W Berry IV
• Fred Duis
• Laura Francis
• Gary Guida
• Janie Mantooth
• John Stafford

The Bower Center