ATHENS, Ga. — Loved ones are remembering the life of Dr. Leila Denmark, Georgia's first female pediatrician, who practiced in Atlanta, Sandy Springs and Alpharetta.
Denmark, who died at 114, stopped practicing at 103 when her eyesight became too weak to diagnose children's throats and rashes. She retired to a home with her daughter, Mary Hutcherson, in Athens. Hutcherson recalled fond memories of her mother with Channel 2's Jeff Dore.
"If people couldn't pay, she'd see them anyway. She'd always see them," Hutcherson said. "If they came at 2 o'clock in the morning, she'd see them. She was entirely focused on trying to do something for children."
Born in the 1800s, Denmark's life spanned three centuries. When Egleston Children's Hospital opened, she signed on, admitting its first patient. Denmark and her husband eventually moved to Alpharetta. Still practicing at 100, reporters came from all over.
"They'd show up and (she would) finally say, rather crisply, 'Now if all you want to talk about is how old I am, and how old my office is, I'm not going to talk to you,'" said Hutcherson. "What she wanted was to tell them was how she felt about children and what she was trying to do to make them better."
Denmark had stern advice for raising children and wrote a widely read book on the topic. When she retired, generations of mothers kept calling.
"People called her up and said, 'My baby's not doing right,'" Hutcherson said.
Denmark was the world's oldest pediatrician and the world's fourth-oldest person, but will continue saving lives even in death: she was co-inventor of the whooping cough vaccine that has saved babies all over the world.
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