This is rather lengthy, and I apologize, but it explains my presence today: On 9 August 1935 my Daddy left Pike County, Kentucky, for his new life in FDRs new CCC, and two days later he and a large group of young men, largely from the mountains, arrived at the railroad station in the tiny southern Indiana village of Worthington. From there they marched two or three miles to their new home, Camp Cavalier. They would build bridges, plant trees, and assist in building state parks and roads, all for the magnificent wage of $30 per month. Of that wage they would receive $5, the other $25 being sent back home to their families in the mountains. About two years later he would marry a 15-year old Irish girl named Olive Mae Kirkpatrick. Nearly three years after this, on a hot August day in 1940, she went to the town doctor, George Moses, a bald-headed cigar-smoking, dynamo of a man, and a saint if ever there was one. Her complaint? Her unborn baby, which she had carried for about 8 months, had stopped moving. He could not make the fetus move, could not detect a heartbeat, so scheduled her to travel to Indianapolis the next day to the Wm. H. Coleman Hospital where she would see the top OB-GYN doctors that he knew. When the couple arrived early the next morning, she was poked, prodded, her abdomen was electrically-stimulated, ice-packs and heat-packs were alternately applied, and countless X-Rays were taken to see if the unborn childs heartbeat could be detected or if the baby would move. After a long day of this kind of testing, a group of physicians assembled around her bed in the hospital room and told the young couple that, in their best medical judgment, the child she had carried for these past eight months had died, and they would surgically remove the remains of conception the next morning. The devastated young couple cried, talked among themselves for a time, and she asked for privacy to get dressed, that they were going home. The astonished doctors asked, Why? Dont you understand the severity of your condition? Sepsis will set in, and you will surely die! She quietly said, I will go home and die with my baby. On 17 September 1940 I was born, weighting 9 pounds 15 ounces, and measuring nearly 22 inches in length. Thank you, Mama! God blessed me with loving parents, and I have thanked Him every day since I realized this.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 12:35:31 +0000
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