BERLIN — An oft-repeated saying around the Lower Shore goes the area’s brightest and best rarely get an opportunity to return to where they grew up after college and find meaningful, well-paying careers in their fields.
At least one shining exception to the adage is former Stephen Decatur High School standout Bobby Hammond III, who recently completed his Doctorate degree at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and is now working as a certified physical therapist at his family’s business, Atlantic Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine, Inc. Hammond, the quarterback of Decatur’s highly successful teams in the mid-2000s and later a decorated professional boxer, earned his undergraduate degree at Salisbury University before going on to complete his Doctorate in physical therapy at UMES.
Hammond, son of Atlantic Physical Therapy President and CEO Bob Hammond, finished his Doctorate at UMES in September, recently passed his board exams and is now a certified physical therapist. After growing up around the family business, Hammond is now a practicing doctor at the company’s facility in Ocean Pines.
“I can’t tell you how excited I am to be a part of this,” he said this week. “I grew up around the business, cleaning up, folding towels and other chores around the office and this is all I’ve ever known. This is where I grew up since kindergarten and I went to college on the shore and got my doctorate on the shore and now it’s really time to give back to the community that has done so much for me and supported me over the years.”
Bob Hammond started Atlantic Physical Therapy in 1998 with a single location in Ocean Pines, but has expanded steadily over the years. The company now has state-of-the-art physical therapy and sports medicine facilities in Millsboro and Laurel in neighboring Sussex County and two more facilities in Philadelphia. Next month, APT will open facilities in Salisbury and Ocean View.
Atlantic Physical Therapy was recently voted the best physical therapy practice in the Ocean City area and awarded Business of the Year for 2013 by the Ocean Pines Chamber of Commerce.
Bobby Hammond’s inspiration for a career in physical therapy naturally derived from growing up around the family practice, but he gained a newfound respect for the profession while rehabbing a sports-related shoulder injury following surgery.
With his extensive sports background, it would seem to naturally follow that he would focus his career on athletic injury rehabilitation. A large amount of his work is related to sports injury prevention and rehabilitation, but his focus has landed on another aspect of the business.
“Being from around here, I’m pretty well-rounded, but my focus is on orthopedics,” he said. “I really like working with geriatrics. We have a large geriatric population here and falls and balance issues are very serious. We can teach ways to strengthen muscles and joints to prevent falls and address balance issues. We can help rehabilitate injuries from falls, but we can also prevent them in the first place.”
For his part, Bob Hammond is thrilled to see his son complete years of undergraduate and doctorate work to follow in his footsteps and join the family business.
“We never really figured him to be a doctor,” he said. “But Bobby has worked extremely hard and I am very proud of him.”