Des Moines, Iowa
You could feel the surprise and excitement. Not
just because medical history had been made with the birth of the first
known surviving septuplets, but because of the people who sat down
behind the two desk signs — “Dr. Paula Mahone” and “Dr. Karen Drake.”
Not only were the two medical celebrities women, they were
African-Americans. And they weren’t in New York or Washington or
Boston. They were in Des Moines, Iowa.
At a news conference at Des Moines’ Iowa Methodist Medical Center,
a couple of hundred national and local media representatives sat in a
small auditorium watching doctors and hospital officials seat
themselves at a long table on stage. The media had been told that after
the births, the doctors who had delivered the McCaughey septuplets
would meet with the media to tell what happened in the delivery and how
babies and mother were doing.
The waiting reporters were expecting White males. Instead, they
were introduced to Mahone and Drake, M.D.s, the obstetricians who
handled the Caesarean-section delivery — two African Americans who
made history in Iowa, a state with one of the least diverse populations
in the nation.
Having had little previous exposure to cameras, cameramen, sound
experts, microphones, booms, lights, and reporters, the two doctors who
sub-specialize in high-risk obstetric cases answered questions with the
eloquence of television-anchor persons. And they did it with humor and
grace, and a lack of pretention rare among physicians.
So who are Mahone and Drake, and how did they get to Iowa?
