Louise deSchweinitz Darrow: Pioneer doctor
by Jennifer Corser
In the 1930s, Louise dechweinitz Darrow was criticized for working outside the home when she had five children to care for.
But she withstood the criticism because, as a pediatrician, she thought caring for other children also was important.
"If you've been trained, you want to do what you've been trained to do," she says.
And now, at 91, helping others still is important to Darrow.
She sits near the outpatient medicine department of the University of Kansas Medical Center helping patients who are lost. It is the same hospital in which she began working as a pediatrician in 1956, to the best of her recollection.
"The world won't end if the dates I tell you are a couple of years off." she says. After 91 years, remembering exact dates is sometimes impossible for her.
Since Darrow retired from her practice 21 years ago, she has kept herself busy with book clubs, the Med Center auxiliary, the League of Women Voters and daily walks.
"There is always something to do," she says.
Although Darrow can remember the important events of her life, she worries about forgetting dates, names and even directions to the Med Center pediatrics department where she worked for about a decade. Sometimes a word ships her memory as well.
E. Joseph Zurga/KANSAN
"I just couldn't be a doctor now," she
"You have to keep on so much."
says 'you have to change' from the world of her youth into the world of today, with its increases in population, homeless people, drug use and daily pressures.
She was friends with Amelia Earhart, who would fly to solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
Darrow met Earlart while they were taking classes together at Columbia University. They remained close friends, and Earlart came to visit Dearrow just months before she disappeared during her attempt to fly around the world.
"I didn't realize that would be the last time I would see her." Darrow says.
But her face lights up when she talks about a recent visit from one of her daughters. Her smile widens and her eyes become excited underneath her hood. horn-rimmed glasses as she talks about their visit to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of
Darrow is obviously proud of her family
but she sometimes feels guilty about leaving her children at home while she nurses.
To her, each member is a rose, a part of her Rose Gallery, as she calls her hallway lined with family photos.
"Sometimes I wondered whether I had injured them," she says.
Her daughter, Dorothea Bone, says the five children didn't mind having a mother to play with.
"We thought it was great having a mother who was active." she says.
none says she remembers Darrow working for women's rights in the 1930s. Among other things, Darrow campaigned for women's access to birth control information.
She also can remember her mother's friends being injured because Darrow's foot was broken.
"That was quite an accomplishment for her generation," Bone says.
Louise deSchweinitz Darrow
A table in Darrow's apartment is another expression of her past. It is covered with animal figurines she occu- pured travels in Turkey, Greece and Egypt.
"Sometimes I look around at everything and wonder what my children are going to do when I die with all the things I've accumulated," she says.
Darrow also is becoming concerned about her health. Recently, she blocked out twice for no apparent reason, her doctors say. Because of that, she has become a member of the AIDS medical assistant team. She owns a small box on a chain on a corner her neck. If she needs help, she can push the button, and someone will come help her.
She has friends nearby who are willing to help out, too. She made those friends in various clubs she belongs to. One of them lives down the hall. If the two go several days without speaking, they leave each other notes, Darrow says. She shuffles down the hall to slip a message under her friend's door.
Although she is lonely at times, Darrow doesn't like to think of what she'll do when she can no longer live alone.
"A lot of people ask me why I don't live near my children, and I say I have friends here," Darrow says "I enjoy visiting them, but I wouldn't live with
"I'm afraid you get very self centered," she says.
Longtime friend June Miller says that Darrow is fat from self-centered, descent and lack of empathy. She bandaged his arm.
died in 1965
"She's a person who gives totally of herself. Miller, professor emeritus of philosophy, taught us."
During Darrow's first years at the Med Center, Miller saw only the sweet, loving side of her friend. She was shocked when Darrow occasionally began talking about her involvement in the women's liberation movement.
"She must have been exceedingly strong-willed," Miller says. "But you never saw it."
never saw her.
Darrow was strong-willed enough to attend Johns Hopkins University medical school at a time when many women were staying at home or attending two-year teaching schools.
"I had a nurse friend whose husband would 'allow,' in quotation marks, her to do volunteer work but not take a paid job." Darrow says.
She doesn't concern herself much with the criticism directed toward her then
"I think some people were a little jealous that I had a maid," she says.
passus that I had a maid," she says. Others may consider her a liberated woman, but Darrow says she is no different from any other woman.
"I must confess, I haven't done anything major," she says.
Because her husband had a medical, residency in Boston, Darrow tried to get one in the same area after receiving her medical degree from John Hopkins in Washington refused because she was a woman, so she took place at an all-women's hospital.
"I could have stayed at Johns Hopkins, but I wanted to try staying in the same town as my husband," she says. "You have to make choices all your life."
She decided to be a pediatrician because her husband was one.
"It just sort of fell into place that way," she says.
After finishing her education, Darrow stayed home to raise her family and work part time. She decided that it was time to care for her own children.
Now she wonders how today's female medical students can balance family and school, although she's glad they are taking more responsibility for themselves. However, she says they still have some work to do towards equality.
"It's still somewhat of a man's world," she says.
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KANSAN/Profiles/April 12, 1989