Doctor in a Dress: The Life and Times of Bonnie Jean Blacklock, MD

By Bonnie Jean Blacklock, MD

As a little girl, Bonnie played with pill bugs and lizards instead of dolls. She became a doctor in 1963, breaking ground for women physicians who followed in her footsteps - and this while raising a family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9780989799812

Book preview

Jean

CHAPTER ONE

MY EARLY LIFE

I have no birth certificate. The only record of my birth was archived in my father’s Bible. I was born February 4, 1919, upstairs in the YMCA in Secaucus, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York City. There was no doctor and probably no midwife in attendance. Mother was willing to go to any extremes to save money.

In addition to my birth, a few other noteworthy events happened in 1919. Among them were: The Treaty of Versailles was signed, ending World War I. The Senate passed the Women’s Suffrage Act. The Prohibition Amendment was ratified. President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke that paralyzed him. For baseball fans: Babe Ruth broke the home run record and the National League outlawed the spitball.

My mother, Pearl Hardcastle, was born into a large family in Springdale, Arkansas in 1891. Her mother’s first husband died, leaving her at the age of 28 with six children. Any woman in her predicament had to hope to attract another man, which she did, and started on the next six children with Robert Hardcastle.

It was common practice to farm out children to live (and work) for another better-off family when a poor family had more children than they could care for. At age thirteen, my mother, the second oldest of the last six was, luckily as it happened, farmed out to a man named John Brown, a well-known evangelist and educator. He was an excellent promoter and fund-raiser, for he started John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, a non-denominational Christian school that is still in existence today. In addition, he started a Christian military school for boys in California, a Christian school for girls in Glendale, California, and a Christian high school in Sulfur Springs, Arkansas.

Mrs. Brown took a liking to her new charge, noted Pearl’s yearning to be educated, and decided she should be allowed to go to school, in addition to her household chores.

John Peachey was in her class all the way through grade school, and in high school they became sweethearts. No one can say which of the two was the best student − they both excelled, but most bets among my brothers and sisters would be placed on Dad, who we always called Pop.

By the time a child reached the age of seventeen, he or she could teach school in those days in Oklahoma. Mother had been dirt-poor all her life and jumped at the opportunity. She found a job in Muskogee, teaching first and second graders, but not having finished high school yet weighed heavily on her mind. She went back to Siloam Springs every weekend where Pop caught her up on school assignments. Somehow, Mother managed to graduate with Pop, the top two students in their class of 1910 − fourteen students.

Pearl Hardcastle, salutatorian, and John Peachey, valedictorian, bottom row, right side, Siloam Springs High School, 1910

They were not ready for marriage right out of high school, and Pop went to California to join his brother, Bill, doing manual labor wherever they could find it. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, there was a popular slogan: Go west, young man.

President Lincoln signed The Homestead Act in 1862 to enhance the settlement of western states. The Act granted 160 acres of public land to anyone who would occupy the land, build a dwelling on it (at least ten by fourteen feet), and farm it for five years.

The claimant had to be twenty-one or older, a US citizen or an immigrant pursuing citizenship, and the head of the household; and never committed treason against the US government.

Pop noted some of this land opportunity in Utah on his way to California, but decided against it, so as not to disappoint his brother. Land was still available in California in 1919, but he didn’t take advantage of it there, either. He was more interested in Pearl Hardcastle.

Pop and Mother carried on their relationship by mail after that via the only railroad across the country, the Overland Trail. In almost every letter he sent, Pop would say I want us to be together forever, and that life isn’t complete without you or other heavy hints about them getting married.

Pearl never said no, exactly, but repeatedly postponed her decision. Instead, she would write back, But John, don’t you think we should complete our educations? Or I do love you, John, but we are so young and shouldn’t rush into marriage, or John, I so much want to marry you. But I don’t want us to live poor. I would never want to have to ‘farm out’ one of our children the way I was, even though the Browns were kind to me.

I don’t know for sure, but I can speculate as to why she held out. In those days, as soon as a woman was married, children were bound to soon follow, and Mother had already seen firsthand that having children would keep a woman from ever doing anything else. A single woman might be able to get a job, but in the eyes of many employers, a woman’s place was in the home. And her working would be taking that job away from a man who had a family to support.

There were certain jobs a married woman could get, especially cooking, cleaning, and caring for children. This was the expected protocol for women when Mother grew up. Formal education was mainly for boys, and a select few highly intellectual girls. When women began working outside the home in the late 1800s, they found work mainly in textile mills and garment shops. So these were the acceptable occupations for most working women: factory labor or domestic work. Some may have rented out space in their homes, which then doubled as small boarding houses. They were by and large excluded from professions, except for writing and teaching, and these positions were mainly limited to single women.

To hire a married woman, even one who didn’t currently have children, would risk wasting training on her when, most likely, she would soon be pregnant and have to resign. In any event, Pop was twenty-three when he asked her to marry him again, this time without any subtlety.

Pearl wrote back, Get your college degree and I will marry you.

Pop fired back, What do you want? A man or a degree? It is now or never!

Mother immediately packed her bags with all her worldly goods, and rode the Overland Trail to San Luis Obispo, California. But when she disembarked the train, Pop was nowhere to be found.

She thought, How inconsiderate and undependable! What have I done?

She prayed, God, if I have made a mistake, thank you for letting this plan fail now. Pop was thinking the same thing 15 miles down the track, where he understood the designated meeting place to be, and said a similar prayer. By the Grace of God they found each other and got married by the closest Baptist minister they could find, on June 15, 1914 (also my anniversary, but in 1939.)

They remained in California for about a year, long enough for John Franklin, Junior to be born. In 1917, with teaching on their minds and adventure in their hearts, they decided to move east. Unfortunately, they ran low on money before they even made it halfway to the East Coast. And fortunately, Pop managed to land a job teaching school in Olathe, Colorado. This school was so hard up for teachers, they even hired Pearl despite her marital status. Mother’s talent was with younger children. She taught grades one through four, while Pop taught grades five through eight. They were assigned to a two-room school with an attached lean-to that housed Pop, Mother, and their new child. They soon added Pop’s sister, Effie, to the family to take care of the baby. Pop taught ten-year-old Effie when she wasn’t taking care of the baby – sometimes in class, sometimes not.

Pop and Pearl Peachey, Pop holding John Franklin, Jr.

In 1918, Mildred was born, and within a year, they accumulated enough money to continue east, landing in Secaucus, New Jersey.

In Secaucus, Mother stayed home with the two babies while Pop ran the YMCA. He was the manager, the bookkeeper, and in one instance, even the bouncer. He was a strong young farm boy and athlete over six feet tall. Walter, the cook, repeatedly complained about one of the dishwashers.

Finally, Walter put his foot down. In a voice quivering with anger, he said, John, Earnest always shows up late and sometimes doesn’t even show at all. He’s so undependable, I can’t tolerate it anymore! Either he goes or I go!

When Pop broke the unwelcome news, Earnest became angry, pulled out a knife, and moved threateningly toward Pop. Pop didn’t hesitate for a second and hit him full force with his fist right on the jaw. POW!Earnest tumbled right out the front door, landing on the sidewalk.

That should have been the end of it, but Earnest had Pop arrested for assault, and Pop was handcuffed and hauled off to jail. Fortunately, there were witnesses to the incident, so the police released Pop the next morning. Years later, when we were both older, my sister, Ruth, told me that Pop, uncharacteristically I might add, had shown her the displaced, boney bulge he had just below his fifth knuckle. I think he was secretly proud of the disfigurement that resulted from that altercation. Later on, when I studied orthopedics, I realized Pop had suffered a classic boxer’s fracture, a break in the shaft of the fifth metatarsal bone. He hadn’t received treatment and it healed – shorter than the other knuckles and with that hard lump on the side of his hand.

While living in the YMCA, Mother suffered a miscarriage and then she had me. In 1920, John Franklin, Jr. was stricken with diphtheria and died at the age of three. He was interred on Long Island in a pauper’s grave. Mother once recounted to me the heart-wrenching memory of burying her firstborn. It was the custom at that time for the parents to drop the first two shovelfuls of dirt onto the coffin – first Mother, then Pop.

I heard the echo of that dirt hitting the coffin for years, Mother related to me later, and I can still hear it. In her sorrow, she consoled herself by clinging to the children she had left, and those who were yet to come. Pop told me later that they both took John, Jr.’s death very hard. He tried to be strong and stoic and spent many hours trying to find answers to this tragedy in the Book of Job. Mother, on the other hand, cried for weeks, if not months. A vaccine was developed during the next decade and diphtheria deaths began declining in earnest in 1924.

By this time, Mother was tiring of what she called snooty Easterners.

They’re so unfriendly, they’re almost not human, she would say − or God intended people to talk to each other and help one another. All they care about is store-bought clothes! Of course, Mother’s Southern upbringing was in complete conflict with Northern society. She was accustomed to being a member of church organizations where people were used to sharing friendly gossip and personal information freely. And, her own eccentricities could have created first impressions that contributed to her problems.

Meanwhile, at a young age, I was already showing interest in things scientific. I’ve been told that, when I was about three, I came into the house one day sucking my beloved thumb while clutching something tightly in my fist.

Mother’s curiosity led her to ask, Bonnie Jean, what is that in your hand?

My left thumb remained steadfastly in my mouth, but that same little hand opened up to free and scatter over the floor a dozen or so pill bugs I had collected.

The family moved to Tulsa, closer to their roots, where Paul was born in 1920, then to Dallas. Ruth, Truett, Elizabeth, and Jimmy were all born in Dallas and not only was our family now much bigger, we also always had others living with us − my grandmother, an aunt, uncle, or cousin. On top of all of them, Mother would frequently befriend some homeless young girl and bring her in to help run the household.

After a few years in Dallas, Mother convinced Pop to start a church. They were always deeply religious, anyway, and Pop wasn’t even close to that college degree Mother wanted them both to have so badly.

But you can preach the gospel, Mother told Pop. We can make a better living and I think that’s what God wants us to do. People have always listened to you…and I can help you run the church. This last statement of Mother’s was oh, so true. She couldn’t help herself − trying to run everything − and the people who ran Baptist churches, at least in those days, were men. This always got Mother (and Pop, by default) in trouble with certain parishioners, no matter where Pop preached.

One day half the family piled into the old Model T Ford, the kind with the hand crank in front to start it. (The recoil from that hand crank broke many an arm before the automatic starters were invented.) While Pop and Mother rode in the car with the younger children, the rest of us skipped alongside it, in a Dallas neighborhood near Oak Cliff; canvassing any passersby they saw in an attempt to arouse interest in a Baptist church for the area.

There was a positive response and Hillcrest Church was born, starting with a congregation of only about three dozen worshipers − but the recruiting efforts continued, and we gained new members every week.

My earliest memories are of Dallas. At last we got a real house, on Ramsey Street − Pop’s and Mother’s first one. Mother was very, very happy with our new home. It had a guest house in the back with plenty of room for a private school.

The local school district wouldn’t hire Mother to teach because she wasn’t either a man or a single woman; undaunted, she recruited 30 students from here and there, starting with families from the church. This caused an uproar with the independent school district; they didn’t like Mother. She was taking money away from the public school coffers − but this wasn’t her problem.

I don’t care a bit whether they like it or not, Mother said. I have a family I have to help support! Mother preferred teaching the lower grades, and she managed to recruit a lot of first through third graders, so I guess she won out over the district’s objections − adding a few Bible lessons in every class.

One Sunday afternoon, Pop put us all in the old Ford and took us to Love Field − a brand new airport. We were thrilled to see the Delta Airlines planes flying in and out over our heads about every twenty minutes. We were able to drive right up close to where the planes were taking off and landing. Pop turned around the car on that narrow road with water on both sides, and I was terrified we were all going right into the drink. I still experience that same fear when I am around what I perceive to be precarious situations or heights.

Medicine was still primitive in the 30s. Our primary doctor was Mother, and no matter what the ailment, our bowels had to be cleaned out with castor oil. Mother would have us take a deep breath; then she’d hold our noses and pour it down. Ugh! Even mixing it with orange juice didn’t help. Castor oil was a miracle cure, but not the way Mother intended. Just the thought of having to take that awful stuff kept us from complaining when we were feeling sick.

Mother would always try to save money on doctor bills, and we didn’t get vaccinations, even though they had already lost a child to diphtheria. To be fair to Mother, vaccinations were available but new, and in some cases, untested. In 1925, Paul, age five, Ruth, age four, Truett, age two, and Elizabeth, newly born, all came down with diphtheria; and they thought Mildred, age seven, had it. Pop, Mother, and I, at age six, were the only ones who didn’t get sick. The quarantine officer came to the house and gave me some sort of treatment – probably the anti-toxin. Paul almost died, but somehow my siblings all pulled through that terrible time – all, that is, except Mildred. Somewhere along the line, it was discovered, Mildred did not have diphtheria at all, rather a ruptured appendix with peritonitis. She died very quickly after an emergency appendectomy. Antibiotics were not available and appendicitis deaths were a common occurrence in those days.

Mildred had been my best friend and playmate since birth. Ever since I had learned to write, we’d slipped notes back and forth to each other when we were supposed to be sleeping. I was inconsolable. I cried and cried for weeks.

Someone had given Mildred and me a doll. We were fighting over it and its head cracked. I felt terrible about this, and after Mildred died, I would dream about it and awaken in tears of remorse for not having let Mildred just play with the doll. Mother kept a box of mementos with Mildred’s few possessions.

Mother, I said, right before I got married, would you give me something of Mildred’s for my new house? She gave me a pair of Mildred’s shoes and I had them bronzed. I still have them on my fireplace mantle today.

The church was doing well despite the dilapidated old wooden structure; meanwhile a new building program was under way. Very soon we had a new brick church. Pop’s Bible was placed in the cornerstone with an insignia on the outside.

Pop spent untold hours expanding our membership, and subsequently, the new building. Soon he was putting back into the church, not only his tithe, but whatever other money the church was short to keep it in the black. Unfortunately, that put our family expenses in the red, and we lost our beautiful house. What a terrible mistake Pop had made – but he realized it too late. The church let us stay in the Sunday school building, but Mother had tears in her eyes for weeks.

Mother’s lifelong dream of avoiding extreme poverty was now a losing battle. Just as bad, the inconvenience of having a family in the Sunday school building caused certain church people to sour on their leader.

When we lost our home, Mother couldn’t maintain her private school, and I was sent to public school. An Irishman, Mister McIntosh, was the principal, and he apparently held a grudge about the past competition from Mother. He placed me in the first grade, although I was ready for third.

A week later, my first grade teacher, Miss Chapman, told McIntosh, Bonnie does not belong in first grade, and I was moved to second. Another month and the second grade teacher told him I didn’t belong there either, so I was finally placed in third, where I fitted in nicely.

Well, I’d say I merged pretty well, but Mother not only had puritanical ideas of how to dress, my clothes that were not secondhand were rather poorly handmade. My paltry share of worldly goods compared to some of my classmates, combined with my shyness, convinced me that my success in life depended on other things.

I told Ruth, "I must excel academically," and I did.

I had to walk to school across the Trinity River bed that was dry at times. Next to the river I always walked by Mrs. Lulling’s house. She was a church member who had cancer, and Pop had asked the whole congregation to pray for her. I prayed for her every night, and in addition to my prayers, I dug up some lovely sunflowers from the riverbed and planted them outside her bedroom window. Pop had always preached upbeat sermons, and certainly our prayers and those flowers would influence God to save her. It surprised and disappointed me when she died. Death again deeply affected me and I was awash in sad feelings once more.

The following winter, I was walking to school in one of Mother’s resewn dresses, a thin coat, and with a bad case of the sniffles. It was bitter cold, the wind started to blow, and then came the rain. By the time I arrived at school I was thoroughly soaked and shivering uncontrollably.

The school nurse, Mrs. Mason, took me down some stairs to the basement, sat me down by the boiler with blankets, and said, Bonnie Jean, you just stay right here until you’re warm and dry.

I wondered while I