Community's cure-all delivered babies and truth

At 89, longtime Bahama doctor reflects on years served

Dr. Marie Roberts is quick to cut a baby's umbilical cord, but rarely cuts her "babies" any slack.

From 1951 to 1967, straight-talker Roberts was the only doctor in this crossroads community 10 miles north of Durham that now numbers 3,300. She and the four generations of Roberts family members buried in Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church cemetery are as much the bedrock of the community as the three families -- Ball, Harris, Mangum -- the community (pronounced bah-hay-ma) is named after.

But Roberts, 89 and single, says: "I don't want to appear presumptuous. I don't want to be pointed out as, 'Who does she think she is?' "

Who she is: A country doctor fiercely committed to her patients; a pillar of the community; a straight-ahead truth-teller.

Len Needham, 43, chief of the Bahama Volunteer Fire Department, knew Roberts' steadfastness from his first breath. His father was immobile in a body cast from a horseback riding accident when Needham's mother began having contractions with him.

"She came and picked up Mama" in her Rambler and drove her to Watts Hospital for the delivery, recalls Needham.

Despite bringing Needham into the world, Roberts never takes it easy on him in her role as treasurer of the Bahama Volunteer Fire Department, a position she has held for the past 18 years.

"She tells me in the meetings, if I don't do finances right, she brought me [into this world] and she'll take me out," Needham jokes.

Frugality is a Roberts watchword, from reminders about turning out the lights at the fire department to what she charged as a doctor.

Alton P. Mangum, 78, a retired office manager for Duke Power, stuck a nail in his foot one Sunday morning.

Roberts was in her garden when he arrived.

"She gave me a shot and didn't charge me but 50 cents," he recalls.

As a child Roberts noticed that money was one of the first questions doctors in Durham asked about when a sick person called from Bahama.

"I deplored it," Roberts says of the paucity of medical care in Bahama in the '20s and '30s. "That was one of the things that was influential in my deciding to study medicine."

Roberts' educational journey was circuitous: a chemistry degree in 1937 from what is now UNC-Greensboro; two years in a Burlington lab; a master's degree in bacteriology from the University of Minnesota; four years working in a Florence, S.C., lab; one year teaching at UNC-G; medical training at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston from 1945-49; and a two-year internship at Watts Hospital.

Afterward, she came to Bahama to fulfill her childhood dream, but first had to encounter the dividing wall of sexism.

"I had patients who would look you in the face -- men and women -- and say, 'I don't want a woman doctor.' I'd say, 'I hope you don't have one'," she recalls. "These were some of the same folks who would be glad to see me at 2 a.m. when they came crawling on the floor with kidney colic."

Roberts set up practice in a three-room building at the Bahama crossroads in 1951 without a phone.

Without appointments, blacks and whites piled up in her waiting room. She worked six days a week and treated up to 30 patients daily, along with a few home visits.

"I wasn't trying to break ground or create a sensation," she says. "I was just seeing a need. ... I hope I helped a few people."

She aided the delivery of more than 400 babies, some at home. One baby was delivered in the front seat of a car.

One night she went to a woman in labor who was headed for a breech birth.

The house had no electricity. The husband was alone with a kerosene lamp.

"He was holding the lamp with one hand and helping me with the other hand," she recalls.

"And the ... baby was on the floor between us ... . And you don't think I had help from above?"

Roberts laughs and rolls her eyes when asked about her earnings.

"I sent out bills one time and didn't get anything back," she says. "Why waste your time?"

In her best years she cleared about $15,000, after she had paid for the medicine she dispensed.

She worked hard for the little money she did receive.

Occasionally, she shipped out for trips on freighters to the Caribbean, the Mediterranean or East Africa. By 1967, she was burnt out.

"The reason I quit was I was going 16-18 hours a day and that wasn't enough," she recalls. "When I said I didn't have enough time (to treat another patient), they'd get ugly. It bothered me."

She took a clinic job at the Durham County Health Department, where she worked for 15 years. The regular hours, holidays and a pension were like retirement.

She taught an adult Sunday school class at Mt. Bethel. She stopped at the turn of the year after 35 years.

The fire department and the Bahama Woman's Club now receive much of her attention, along with her garden.

This past November, more than 100 people piled into the social hall of Mt. Bethel United Methodist to help Roberts celebrate her 89th birthday. Medical colleagues, church members, neighbors and a representative from UNC-G all came to pay tribute.

It's only fitting that, according to Roberts, "a bunch of my babies" were there as well.