TUPELO, Mississippi—Tupelo pediatrician Dr. Charles “Skip” Robertson is retiring March 31 after 35 years of practice in Tupelo.

Dr. Robertson says the best part of his career has been the relationships with patients and their families. “I’m now taking care of children—maybe even grandchildren—of patients I took care of when I first came to Tupelo,” he says. “Watching my patients grow up and do well has been a lot of fun.”

After practicing in Jackson for nine years, Dr. Robertson joined Children’s Clinic of Tupelo in 1987. He practiced with Drs. Bill Hilbun, Ed Ivancic and Gordon Meador, who is his wife’s brother. In 1993, Children’s Clinic of Tupelo merged with Drs. Charles Tharp, Marion Winkler and Frank Wilburn of the Infant, Children and Adolescent Clinic to form North Mississippi Pediatrics.

In 2017, North Mississippi Pediatrics forged a partnership with North Mississippi Health Services and Children’s of Mississippi, and the practice became (once again) Children’s Clinic of Tupelo and Saltillo.  In 2021, the two clinics moved into a centralized location in Fairpark in downtown Tupelo.

A 1966 graduate of Meridian High School, Dr. Robertson earned a bachelor’s degree in history with minors in Greek and English from the University of Mississippi in Oxford in 1970. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Mississippi School of Medicine in Jackson in 1975 and completed residency training in pediatrics at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in 1978.

Dr. Robertson practiced at Children’s Clinic in Jackson for two years before working in the UMMC Department of Pediatrics from 1980-1985. In 1986 he completed a fellowship at Children’s Hospital in Boston in ambulatory pediatrics, with a focus on children who should be doing well in school but weren’t. He rejoined the UMMC Department of Pediatrics for a year before moving to Tupelo.

“We had looked at Tupelo in 1978 when I finished residency, but we chose to stay in Jackson,” Dr. Robertson says. “When I decided to leave academic medicine, we were fortunate that another offer came to practice in Tupelo.”

Dr. Robertson served almost 20 years as a pediatrics preceptor for North Mississippi Medical Center’s Family Medicine Residency Program and was chosen Preceptor of the Year in 2007. He still volunteers as a pediatrician for CATCH Kids three nights each month.

At NMMC, he served as chair of the OB-GYN/Pediatrics section from 1996-1998 and received the Golden Tongue Blade Award in 2009. He served on the School Nurse Project Steering Committee and Child Protection Taskforce. He also taught Pediatric Advanced Life Support courses.

In 2007, Dr. Robertson was one of two private practice pediatricians statewide appointed to the Caring for Mississippi Individuals with Autism Taskforce. He also served on the editorial board for Mississippi Healthy Babies Update.

He was an active volunteer with Tupelo Public School District, serving on the Board of Trustees from 1995-2003 and as school board president from 1997-1999 and 2001-2003. He tutored the THS Academic Decathlon Team and has led staff development sessions for teachers on attentional disorders in children, which is a special interest of his.

In 2014, Dr. Robertson cut back to working part-time but hasn’t slowed down much. He volunteers one day each week for the Food Pantry at St. Luke United Methodist Church, where he also co-teaches an adult Sunday School class.

Once he retires, he plans to find other ways to serve his community. He also has travel plans, including a trip to Scotland this summer, as well as visits with family.

Dr. Robertson and his wife, Barbara, recently celebrated their 50^th anniversary. They have three children, all of whom are physicians. Charles (Sonny) is a pediatric anesthesiologist in Jackson and has two children, Nate and Cece. Peter (Kimberly) is a cardiac electrophysiologist in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and has two daughters, Anna and Laura. Adrianne (Mark) Rawls specialized in pathology but is currently a preschool teacher and full-time mother to their sons, James and Jonathan, in Brentwood, Tennessee.