The stories flowed Friday night about three doctors being honored for their years of service to the residents of west Fresno.

The tributes to Drs. Ulysses S. Curry, Edward Mosley and Noel J. Smith began before the West Fresno Health Care Coalition's "Tribute to Champions in Health Care" program started at the Radisson Hotel and Conference Center.

The doctors' decades of delivering babies and treating illnesses garnered them the respect of the 380 people who attended the dinner in their honor.

Mosley, 81, opened a private practice in southwest Fresno in 1956. Smith, 80, a retired obstetrician/gynecologist, began delivering babies here in 1958. And Curry, 83, opened a private family practice in 1956 that he continues to operate out of his west Fresno office four days a week.

"They were good doctors when you needed somebody," said Doris Austin, 60, a retired surgical nurse who lives in west Fresno.

Smith and Mosley took care of her sore throats and other minor illnesses when she was a child and teenager, Austin said. And she's known Curry for years.

"I wouldn't have missed this for anything," she said.

Wilma Francis, 60, of west Fresno, said she got up too quickly after the birth of a child more than 25 years ago, and her feet began to swell. Her husband rushed to Smith's home for instructions on her care. "Everybody knew where he lived," she said.

The doctors' civic contributions to the community also stand out -- Mosley serves on the West Fresno Health Care Coalition Board of directors; Smith was a co-founder of the nonprofit organization. And Curry has been a practicing physician in west Fresno for nearly 50 years.

Said Larry L. Powell, deputy superintendent at the Fresno County Office of Education: "They've been institutions on the west side forever."

Not all the memories shared Friday night were strictly about the doctors' medical talents or their donations of time to community organizations.

Christopher Mosley, 39, an attorney in Denver, said Edward Mosley was a strict father. "But my father is absolutely my hero. He is my role model."

Evelyn Garland, 75, of Fresno connected cooking to Smith. Never mind that the retired obstetrician/gynecologist delivered her fifth daughter. It's the cooking this long-time friend most remembered about the physician.

Dr. Tony Molina, a Fresno doctor at the student health center at California State University, Fresno, serves on the Sequoia Community Health Foundation board with Mosley.

Molina said unless Mosley has bought a new car recently, the retired internist is tooling around Fresno in an El Camino pickup.

"He's very unassuming," said Molina. "You wouldn't know he's a doctor when he's driving around in it."

Herbert Turner, 72, of Fresno chatted about Curry before dignitaries including state Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento; Assembly Member Juan Arambula, D-Fresno; and Fresno City Council Member Cynthia Sterling read resolutions honoring the three.

Turner said Curry's whisper-thin voice is legendary at the Second Baptist Church, where the doctor is a deacon. He talks so softly at the pulpit that everyone knows to lean forward to hear him speak.

But Turner said not everyone knows the family practitioner for years carried a five-battery flashlight "because he used to make night calls."

The reporter can be reached at banderson@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6310.