From medical students to lifelong friends: KCU-COM alumna delivers former classmate’s first grandchild

Meeting your first grandchild is a once-in-a-lifetime event; having your former classmate deliver your grandchild makes it even more special.

Such was the case for Shane Speights, DO, campus dean of New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State University (NYITCOM at A-State) in Jonesboro, Arkansas, when his former classmate, Amanda Deel, DO, associate dean of academic affairs and graduate medical education at NYITCOM at A-State, delivered his grandson, Harvey, this July. “She practices great medicine,” Speights said of Deel. “She’s very attuned. She’s who you’d want taking care of your family.”

Speights and Deel first crossed paths in 1998 in a microbiology lab at Arkansas State University. Speights was completing his prerequisites for medical school, while Deel was working on her undergraduate degree. Little did they know that this chance meeting would mark the beginning of a friendship that would span decades.

In the years that followed, their lives would intersect many times. They both were accepted into Kansas City University College of Osteopathic Medicine (KCU-COM) where they spent their first two years of medical school. They did their next two years of clerkship at a community hospital in West Plains, Missouri, which served a more rural population.

It was during their time in West Plains when Speights’ wife, Cheryl, went into labor with their second child. The couple needed someone to stay with their daughter, Abby, while they went to the hospital for the delivery, so they asked Deel. “Amanda brought our daughter over to meet our son when he was born,” said Speights. “She's always been a part of the family.”  

Both Speights and Deel graduated from KCU-COM in 2004. Deel then completed a graduate transitional internship at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth in Portsmouth, Virginia, followed by five years of service in the U.S. Navy as a medical officer. Speights went directly into residency training at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Family Medical Center in Jonesboro, Arkansas. But the two former KCU-COM classmates were to cross paths yet again. When Deel finished her military service, she chose to complete her residency at UAMS where, by then, Speights was an attending physician. “I taught her how to do C-sections and deliver babies,” said Speights.

Professionally, Speights and Deel were involved in helping develop the first osteopathic medical school in Arkansas, NYITCOM at A-State, where they both currently work. “When Dr. Deel and I were starting the program here, we fashioned it and emulated it after our experience at KCU,” said Speights. “We created the clinical curriculum specifically around our experience in West Plains, Missouri, because we realized how valuable that was.” 

Throughout the years, Deel has remained close with the Speights family, including Abby as a flower girl in her own wedding, and, after having her own daughter, asking Abby to be her first babysitter.

When Abby Speights-Hass, now grown up and married, told her father that she was expecting, he asked her which obstetrician she was going to use for her delivery. “She said, ‘“Well, of course I’ll have Dr. Amanda take care of me,’” Speights remarked. “It wasn’t even a second thought.”

“I’ve known her for so long, and because I think so highly of her, it was a huge honor,” Deel said about Speights-Hass’ decision to deliver her baby. “It's magical every time, but  when it was Abby, it was particularly special, knowing that I was going to do absolutely everything I could to make it safe - but also enjoyable - for her,” said Deel. “There could have been a lot of people who could have witnessed it, but I got to be the one to do it.”

This remarkable journey from classmates to colleagues and lifelong friends illustrates the profound bonds that can be formed through shared experiences in medical school. For Speights and Deel, their interconnected paths have not only shaped their professional careers but also enriched their personal lives in unexpected and meaningful ways.