Dr.

Denmark examines
John Morecraft. {This
was some time ago, as
John Is now in the
sixth grade.)
The pediatrician
doesn't schedule
appointments and
At 91, after
61 years of
treating
children,
takes as long as
an hour getting to
know a family.
Dr. Leila
Denmark has
some surprzszng
ideas about
motherhood
'The
Hardest Job on Earth'
by
LouAnn
Walker
'
t must be the most unmodem
doctor's office in the United
States," John Eustace Den-
mark, 90, says of the 125-year-
oldfarmhouse where his wife,
the pediatrician Dr. Leila
Denmark, 91, has her practice.
The floors are bare dark wood
(rugs would be too germ-ridden). The
equipmentis astonishingly simple: a scale
for Weighing infants, her original 1928
stethoscOpe, a few basics. On the desk
and tacked to a screen are three genera-
tions of children's photographs.
I had come to rural Georgia to write a
story about one of America's oldestprac-
ticing physicians and expected to hear
about the eatly days and how much better
the practice of medicine used to be. I was
to be constantly surprised.
A handsome woman, her hair gathered
in a bun, Dr. Denmark has a spare frame.
Her face only slightly weathered, she
looks many years younger than her age.
The Counsel of Chalcedcm April, 1990 page 6
Soon after we met, she was freely sharing
her opinions on motherhood and child-
rearing. She is not the least bit sentimen-
tal.
"The hardest job on earth is being a
mother," she says. "It should be the best-
educated job. I never ask any woman to
be a mother if she doesn' t want to. A lot
of women shouldn't be mothers. Every
sorry man was made by a woman-and
every good man was made by a woman."
Every weekday but Thursday, Dr.
Denmark-who never leaves her house
without hat and gloves-sets off to work
in her barebones office. By 8 a.m., the
rooms are filled with mothers-their
babies crying, wriggling, playing. There
are no scheduled appointments. A sign-
up book rests atop an antique marble-
topped table. Some parents drive 90 miles
or more to her office, which is 8 miles
from the nearesttown. There's :no nurse.
"I don't want somebody saying, 'Hurry
up,"' Dr. Denmark explains. She takes as
long as an hour getting to know a family.
Each day she sees 20 to 30 children.
I watch, fascinated, as she
takes a little boy's arm fmnly
but gently. "This is going to
hurt," she warns as she starts to
inject him. She never dissembles
to children. "They're too o n ~
est," she says.
Leila Daughtry was gradu-
ated from the Medical College
of Georgia in 1928 (she was its
third woman graduate), a time
when only four or five women
were graduating annually from
the nation's medical schools.
She then became the flrst intern
at Egleston Hospital for Chil-
dren, now one of the South's
largest hospitals. She also be-
gan charity work at a clinic in a
Presbyterian church, andforthe
next 56 years she spent every
Thursday there, treating mal-
adies from colds to syphilis,
often as not giving patients a
nickel to get home on the street-
car.
In those days, she made housecalls. "I
remember lecturing a mother about ster-
ilizing bottles," she recalls. "But I didn' t
know how they were living. There was a
dirt floor-! couldn't believe they kept a
child alive in that dirt."
But Dr. Denmark, who considered
herself only a fair student, was always
looking for answers in medicine. When a
baby found in a trash can didn'trespond
to treatment, the young woman intern
broke the rules by inventing a special
formula. The baby lived. In the early 30s,
whooping cough caused seizures and
brainhemorrhagesinchildren.Afterthree
babies died, Dr. Denmark drew blood
from a man with whooping cough who
had broken three ribs coughing violently,
then she injected the serum in her young
patients-a pioneering technique no
longer used. They got well. Inoculation
against whooping cough is now routine
protection worldwide.
"I've been a skeptic about accepting
things," Dr. Denmark explains. "I listen
carefully and make up my own mind."
Many of her treatments-for disorders
from milk intolerance to polio-have been
innovative.
Although Dr. Denmark calls many of
her views "old-fashioned," others are
remarkably modem. She's delighted that
Wheo the Denmarks built the house next to the
old building to be used for Dr.Denmark's office,
they built the new house with a floor plan like
theiroldhouseinAtlanta,sotbeywouldn'tbave
to decide where to place the furniture, rugs, etc.
antibiotics, baby food and immunizations
have made parents' and babies' lives
easier. Her book, Every Child Should
Have a Chance, has influenced Georgia
mothers for years. In it, she strongly
discourages "demand feeding,'' now in
vogue. She also vigorously opposes a
mother's drinking or smoking. She tells
of one very stiff baby: "It was coming off
nicotine addiction. I asked the mother,
' What about when the boy is 5 and he
takes a puff!' 'I'llwearitout,' the mother
answered [meaning she'd spank him].
'Well, how can you?' I asked. 'It's just
doing exactly what you do."'
Some of Dr. Denmark's views are
controversial: She does not believe moth-
ers should work outside the home. She
disapproves of day-care centers because
children don't receive enough individual
attention-and they snack too much.
"Without parents' guidance, children are
insecure, immature robots,'' she says.
"She tells parents to take charge," says
Marty Franchot, a mother of three.
"Everything she tells you to do works,"
says Sharon Cannon. "Everything."
As children, Leila and her
husband-to-be, John Eustace
Denmark (she generally calls
him Eustace), lived one farm
apart on the rich, black earth of
south Georgia. "I remember his
blue velvet suit," she says. Leila
(pronounced lee-la) was one of
12 children; Eustace had six
brothers and a sister. Their first
school was a one-room log
cabin. "He was always the
smartest one,'' she says. "But I
helped with his girlfriends."
As a girl, Leila set her sights
on several careers. First, she
wanted to be a milliner (she
made fancy hats for her
mother), then afashion designer
(to this day, she makes her own
clothes), then a dietitian (she
still loves to cook). In college,
when a professor set up a dis-
secting lab for her, she decided
to be a technician; she also
worked in a mill town, helping
children. Finally, her talents melded. Her
goal: to be a missionary doctor.
After college, Leila taught school in
poverty-stricken north Georgia. "It was
work," she says. Eustace also taught,
then headed for Java as a State Depart-
ment vice consul for two years. Return-
ing in 1926, he attended evening law
school, passed the bar, then went into
banking.
Eustace and Leila reached an "under-
standing." She explains wryly: t'I went to
medical school, and no one would have
me. Eustace went around the world, and
nobody would have him. And so we joined
up." They were married in a chapel in
1928. The day after, Leila got up, flxed
breakfast and started her internship. Since
that time, Mr. Denmark, now a retired
Federal Reserve B ankvice-president, has
handled the business end of her practice.
"We lived in the best era on earth,'' Dr.
The Counsel of Chalcedon Aprll, 1990 page 7
Denmark says in her soft drawl. "People
For 56 years, the Den-
marks have sat in the S!liJJ.e pew in the
Druidiiills BaptistChurch.Botb are avid
hikers, and she especially loves camping
ina tent. "I'm as limber as a 16-year-old,"
sqe says, touchlng her toes. Her health
habits are simple: She eats heartily but
neversQacks. "I'm only addicted to prime
rib," she says, laughing. She stopped
eating desserts a quarter century ago.
Over the years, the Denmarks have
moved farther and farther north of At-
lanta. Civilization kept shooting up around
them. In 1949, partly because a neighbor
complained of babies crying, we built an
office across the carport," Dr. Denmark
recalls. "Adoctorfriendsaid, 'Whoitithe
nation is going to be driving out there?'
By 9:30 the day !opened, the parking lot .
was full up. I was in heaven."
In the early 1970s, theDenmarks agreed
to sell that house on a contract: They'd
remain 14 years, then a developer would
take possession. "We thought we'd be
dead and gone when the time came,"
.Eustace Denmark says. They grew to
love their home, and suddenly the con-
tract' s end loomed. Their solution? They
built a virtual duplicate on 81 acres ()f
farmland purchased years before. "Old as .
we are, you don't want to try and arrange
differently," Dr. Denmark says of their
spacious home. "We didn't want to have
to worry about where pictures and rugs
go."
She glances up at a painting of herself
tending a child, made from a newspaper
photograph. "I don' t lilce my looks as an
old person," she says. In the den is a
portrait of a Dr. Denmark, a
brunette, holding her daughter,
Mary (who is now married with two
grownsons) . WhenMazywasachild,Dr.
Denmark recalls, her office was in thejr
breakfast room. A woman cared for Mary
all day, with her mother keeping close
watch. "I learned more from my own
baby than I did in medical school," the
pediatrician says.
On her day off, Dr. Denmark' s phone
rings often. She jumps up to answer.
"Give her a tablespoon of milk of magne-
sia," she says. "There's something in her
stomach we have to get out. Don't give
her ginger ale." Dr. Denmark is quiet a
moment. "Listen to what I'm saying."
She repeats her instructions. "If she gets
a fever, you call me back." .
The phone rings again. "How is the
baby today?" Dr. Denmark asks.
derl"ul," she.says, hearing good news. .
Dr. Denmark has no thought of retir-
.because she doesn't call
what she does "work." "Work is some-
thing you don't want to do, ... she says.
"Something you splay."
She adds, "When you see my name in the
obittiary, that's when you'll know I've
retired." ,
One morning as I watched her watk
briskly through the back door of her
flee at 8 a.m., it was clear that Dr. Den-
mark was excited about starting the new
day. She worked until sundown, not stop-
ping for lunch, brimming with vigor,
optimism and a sense-of mission.
"There are two classes ofpeople being
thrown to the wolves," she told me. "Our .
little people and our old people. If I can.-
just put one more child on the right traek;
this life is worthwhile."
I had gone to Georgia to write about an
unusual at the end of her life, but
what I found was a woman living an
astonishingly richlife. She wasn't just
helping you.ngpeople, she Was teaching
all middle-aged and
old-to live their lives as fully as they
can:
[This article is reprinted, by permission;
fromParademagaz.ine, October 15, 1989, pp.
16-17.] Q
Dr. Denmark's Pronouncements Ot1Child-Rearing
Women have made and trained every man oil earth except Adam. As women think and
cooduct tbelr lives, so 3oes. the country.
You see that little squirrel with the babies out In that tree? She bas never read a book, yet sbe
knows just what to dofortbem. She feeds them, keeps them clean, warm or cool andawayfrom
people. Maybe it is .not quite that simple, but it is not half as as the books,
ne.ighbors, grandparents and doctors would make you think.
I don't know what old age is except when I look in the mirror. And that messes it up!
We're supposed to betbe wisest of creatures, yet we see a pregnant woman drinking alcoholic
beverages, smoking and taking drugs she would never think or giving her .child. Then she
ex.pects her baby to come into the world happy, docile .and cqddly,as a ldtten.
A woman should never bring a child into this w:orld and neglect tbatchild for somebody else's
child or busband.
When ac.hlld drools, his nose is stopped up; Put a dothe5pln on your nose and see if you don't
drool.
'
.. Once a man came to me to ask me to "$lralgbteo out" his three wayward children. The
mother's teeth were so brown from tobaceo stains that, as she smiled, her mouth looked.Iike
a dark hole. The fatller looked even worse. I thoughtto myself, "If I had a stallion that looked
like that mao ao4 a mare tbat looked like thaf mother, . I would not a Kentucky
racehorse out of their colt."
There's nobody can build a Smith !!Xcept a Smith. A .child bas to have a model.
The Counsel of Chalcedon April, 1990 page 8