#52stories - Week 3

Me.  From the beginning. 

I was born  on Monday, June 9, 1952, at the Roanoke Memorial and Crippled Children's Hospital in Roanoke, Virginia.   Here is a postcard photo of the hospital from that time frame. (Courtesy of https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/39186).

 

And this is me shortly afterward taken (I assume) at our home on Tennessee Avenue in Roanoke. I do not remember living there.  I took a picture of the house a couple of years ago and if I can find it, I will include it in an update to this post.

My parents named me Nancy Lynn Alexander.   I don't know where the Lynn came from. But the Nancy is for my aunt Nancy Belle Alexander.  She was my dad's father's sister. I remember her, but not very well because she died in 1958 when I was 6 years old.  Here are two pictures of Aunt Nanny.  One is from her passport application taken in 1923.  The other is later, and she looks more like I remember her.  I don't know the year or where it was taken.

 

My mother told me that I was born on Monday because her obstetrician liked to schedule deliveries of his patients.  He gave my mother castor oil in orange juice to induce labor, which explains why my mother never really liked orange juice.  My brother was also born on a Monday about 17 months later--same doctor.  I was delivered by Dr. Rufus P. Ellett.  I found a picture of Dr. Ellett in the VMI 1940 Yearbook his senior year, so it was before he became a doctor.

After I was married, I learned that my mother had taken diethylstilbestrol (DES) during her pregnancy with me to prevent a miscarriage.  I wrote to Dr. Ellett's office and was fortunate that they could retrieve my mother's records and tell me what she had been given.  I have not experienced the health problems that have been associated with this medication.