Enjoy this guest post by Penny Proctor, Pi Beta Phi.
If you visit Palo Alto, California, you may find yourself enjoying Johnson Park in the city. Located at the intersection of Hawthorne and Kipling streets, it boasts a community garden as well as picnic areas and a family-friendly recreation area. If you look closely at the sign at the main entrance, you will see that the full name of the park is the “Dr. Edith Eugenie Johnson Park.”
So who was Edith Eugenie Johnson, and why is the park named for her?
Edith was the youngest daughter of the ten children of John Johnson, who came to the United States from Denmark in 1850. John prized education, as did his third wife (he was twice widowed); of the nine children who lived to be adults, five daughters became teachers; two sons became attorneys, and one (Alvin Johnson) went on to become of the founders and leaders of the New School for Social Reform in New York City. Edith taught for a while, but she wanted a different path and eventually practiced medicine for more than 50 years.
As her brother Alvin described in his Forward to Edith’s autobiography:
Our Nebraska farm could feed us well, house us well, and supply abundant fuel. …There was no money whatsoever to finance education. This was not discouraging to Edith and me. We had learned to work and wait.
We had to wait a long time. Edith could go off to Sioux City at fourteen [1886] to work for her room and board and attend high school. …[She] went through a teacher’s course and settled down to teach until finances would permit her to study medicine. (i)
Finally, in 1902 at the age of 30, she entered the Cornell University School of Medicine. While at Cornell, she initiated into Eta Chapter of Alpha Epsilon Iota, a now-defunct organization for women medical students. AEI would now be considered a professional fraternity; it was founded in 1890 at the University of Michigan and came to Cornell in 1902. Judging by the Cornell yearbooks of the day, it was treated on the same footing with the women’s sororities that would become the founders of the National Panhellenic Conference. The badge, described as a pentagon, featured the three Greek letters Alpha, Epsilon, and Iota as well as a large, gold snake against a black enamel background. (The Cornell chapter of AEI was dormant by 1913, and the national organization ceased to exist in 1963).
Although she was born and raised in Nebraska, her parents had moved to Palo Alto, California by the time Edith graduated in 1908 and she moved there to live with them. Her first office was a room in the family’s home on Hawthorne Street. According to the City of Palo Alto:
Established community physicians quickly gained respect for Palo Alto’s first woman doctor and utilized her skills, particularly in obstetrics. She delivered more than 3,500 babies in the Palo Alto area during a 30-year period, charging low-income patients little or nothing. (ii)
Her brother Alvin described her acceptance in town this way:
Palo Alto was already equipped with a fine body of well-trained physicians and surgeons. A new doctor might have found it hard to fit in. But Dr. Edith had chosen obstetrics for her specialty. Most men doctors hate obstetrics. …[O]bstetrics is poor pay. …Far from trying to curb the activities of the new woman doctor, the Palo Alto medical faculty were active in sending her patients. Mostly patients who could not pay. (iii)
The population Edith served was comprised largely of Asian immigrants, especially Chinese and Japanese. This group gave her the sobriquet “the White Angel” because of her willingness to help them, regardless of their ability to pay. The nickname was first given when she was summoned to a house to help a newborn who somehow managed to get his head stuck between the slats of his crib. She came at once, but the baby had stopped breathing. In front of the parents, she administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until the infant recovered. From that day on, she was the “White Angel.” (iv) Over the course of the next 30 years, she delivered more than 3,500 babies. (v)
In 1919, she was named the acting medical advisor to the women’s department of Stanford University. (vi) During the Influenza epidemic, she further endeared herself to the community by her tireless care for her patients. Despite this, she still encountered the old prejudices against women professionals. When her mother died in 1916, the obituary identified her brothers in California (two attorneys in Chico and “Dr. A.S. Johnson [Alvin] of the department of economics at Stanford University.” Despite her successful practice of medicine, Edith was mentioned as “daughter Miss Edith Johnson of Palo Alto.” (vii)
All told, Edith practiced for more than 50 years. She never married; her patients were her life. For much nearly all of her practice, she continued to see patients out of her home on Hawthorne Street despite having an office downtown. In 1954, finally retired, she published her autobiography at the urging of her brother Alvin; 12 years later, she passed away.
In 1986, the City of Palo Alto dedicate the “Dr. Edith Eugenie Johnson Park” on Hawthorne Street, directly across from her home, as a permanent memorial to her contribution to the city and its residents. (viii)
