Wave And Say Hello

My mom said that from the moment I could walk, I was waving at anyone who passed by, and as I began to talk, I’d add “hello” to that wave.

As family and friends will attest, I continue this habit to this day. 

(Indeed, once when visiting my son in Seattle, he and I were walking downtown and I waved and said “hi” to someone.  My son corrected me, “Dad, dad, dad, people don’t do that here.  Don’t you know about the ‘Seattle chill?’”)

I guess Seattle’s not my kind of town after all.

Back in Boise the other day, I waved and said hello to a man at my coffee shop.  Next thing you know, he sidled up to my table and introduced himself.

So, meet my new friend, Duane St Clair.

I love to ask questions and just sit back and listen. So, he and I got to talking.

Duane’s pretty good at doing the same – listening – so it and subsequent conversations have been fun exchanges.

Here’s what I learned about him.

Duane is 91.  Yup, 91, and sharp as a whip.

He was born in the Great Depression on a dirt farm in Wapato, Washington, which is close to Yakima.

His family was poor, and when he was 14 his father told him that if he wanted to go to college, he’d need to pay for it himself, with the advice that his son ought to go get a bank loan and buy a mechanized hay-baler and go into business for himself.

So that’s what Duane did.  At 14 years of age, he went to the bank, laid out his business case, and secured a loan for $4,000.  Thirty-five hundred dollars for the hay baler and 500 for working capital items such as fuel and maintenance.  Different times for sure, and for the next 6+ years he baled hay for farms around the valley on a contract business, working long hours during the growing season.  He eventually began purchasing summer hay for himself, storing it, then reselling it during the winter months when it fetched a higher price.

Duane went to medical school and after graduation in 1969 settled in Boise to practice as an OB-GYN physician.  When Roe v. Wade passed in 1973, he had a decision to make – would he perform abortions?  A deeply religious man, Duane and 14 other OB-GYNs were surveyed in Boise, and eight of them said they would perform the procedure.  The community need would be fulfilled, so Duane decided not to include abortions in his practice.

I’ll let Duane take it from here – he provided me with a write-up of his experience, from which I quote here.

“While I believe women are the only ones to decide the best plan for their pregnancies and future, I stated that I would not be including abortion in my practice because other qualified physicians were willing to provide this care.  I did not believe that society in general would ever understand physicians who performed abortions as part of a woman’s medical care.”

Then an interesting thing happened.  Backlash from anti-abortion advocates was swift, with many patients of the eight physicians threatening to seek health care elsewhere.  Threats to physical health of these physicians and their staff were made as well – so within three months, all eight physicians stopped providing the procedure.

Again, from Duane:

“I knew if I stayed in Idaho, as an OB-GYN physician, my deep-seated moral beliefs would compel me to care for women requesting abortion.  I was primarily concerned about poor women, who could not travel 450 miles with little to no resources, and then feel free to decide which option was truly the right one for them.  I felt that a woman in that situation deserved a competent, non-judgmental physician who would take the time to discuss the consequences of her decision, so that she would have few future regrets and be able to continue her life with self-respect and confidence.”

Duane knew what he had to do.  He stepped up and filled the gap, serving as the only OB-GYN in Boise to perform abortion care for over a year until another physician was willing to offer the procedure.

“It was a privilege for me to provide prenatal care and deliver babies, as well as do gynecological care and surgery, but it was a true honor to be part of one of the most difficult times in a woman’s life and provide as non-threatening of an environment as I could for women in crisis pregnancy situations to have an honest, open, soul-searching discussion, and to give quality care no matter what decision they made.”

Women’s gynecological care is just as relevant in Idaho today, where our near-total ban on abortions has caused more than a third of OB-GYNs to leave the state or stop practicing, creating a healthcare emergency where half our counties no longer have an OB-GYN.  You can read about our state’s state of things in this week’s The New York Times Magazine.

Duane’s been retired for a two decades now.  His wife, Evelyn, passed away a couple of years ago, so he moved downtown into a condo and comes to my coffee shop to read, work puzzles, and be around other people.

I’m always happy when I see he’s in the coffee shop, and we usually talk.  Today, we chatted about families, sleep – or lack of it – and the book he was reading, Wandering Souls – and Other Stories by Philip Caputo.

Everyone's got a story. I'm glad I've been able to hear some of Duane's. He's quite a guy – really a beautiful human.  I wish there were more like him around.

Waving and saying hello, to you now.

Godspeed, friends.

Russ