A Life Well Lived

My former pastor had an unusual Mother’s Day tradition. Every year as he prepared his Mother’s Day sermon, he would call Dr. Leila Denmark, the oldest known practicing pediatrician in the country, and ask if she would give advice to the mothers in our congregation. I believe she told us to love our children well . . . and maybe not to feed them too much sugar (something she did not eat and she lived to be 114!).

So it was with sadness that I learned of her passing last week. The world lost a formidable lady. Dr. Denmark was the first female pediatrician in Georgia, the only female graduate of the Medical College of Georgia in 1928, and practiced medicine until she was 103.

In 2006, she told the Atlanta Journal Constitution, “You keep on doing what you do best as long as you can. I enjoyed every minute of it for more than 70 years. If I could live it over again, I’d do exactly the same thing and marry the same man.”

RIP, Dr. Denmark.