(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

- I am Mike Galligan with the Law Offices of Galligan & Newman in McMinnville, Tennessee.

I support WCTE, the Upper Cumberland's owned PBS station because I believe it is important to create entertaining TV programs that also promote lifelong learning and understanding.

When I support WCTE, I know that I am helping our Upper Cumberland community for generations to come.

- [Announcer] The Law offices of Galligan and Newman provide clients with large firm expertise and small firm personalized care and service.

(soft piano music) - I'm Avery Hutchins, your host for "Where Stories Live".

In this show, we explore the characters, homes, and monuments around central Tennessee to learn how people shape the history of our region.

In this episode, we will share the story of Dr. May Wharton, a female physician who made significant contributions to healthcare and education around the Cumberland plateau.

Dr. May worked wonders, modernizing healthcare, expanding education, and bettering the lives of hundreds if not thousands of people by venturing through rugged and dangerous terrain to give treatment and comfort.

To learn more about Dr. May, we sat down with locals to listen to their personal experiences with her, and about how her fierce determination changed the future of this community for the better.

We start with her relocating to Crossville in 1917 and how she tackled basic healthcare issues as soon as she arrived.

- Dr. May Wharton became known as the doctor woman of the Cumberlands because of her pioneering medical work here in Pleasant Hill.

- She would ride a horse through some really pretty rocky difficult areas to get to people to help them.

If someone couldn't pay for a doctor visit, they would give her food, or give her meat that they had put up.

- Dr. May was a lovely lady.

She was a visionary from early on.

- She delivered me in the log cabin that my grandma and grandpa lived in, 1938.

- I know her personally because she saved my mother's life.

- She came to pleasant hill in 1917 when her husband Edwin was appointed as principal of Pleasant Hill Academy.

Dr. May and Edwin had retired to a farm in New Hampshire.

When the call came for Edwin to be principal here, she followed her husband.

She traveled here by herself from New Hampshire.

She arrived on the train in Crossville and in her book, "Dr. Woman of the Cumberlands", she tells about her exciting trip with the mail carrier from Crossville to Pleasant Hill.

It was a rugged four hour trip.

Dr. May had worked in the slums of Cleveland, Ohio and she had seen poverty, but the poverty she saw here was even worse.

When she visited families in their cabins they had no amenities.

They lived very, very close to the bone.

- It was pitiful, really pitiful some of the homes she visited.

No heat, no food, and all this stuff.

They lived hard in those days.

It was bitter in my life.

It wasn't hard like what Dr. May helped.

Pleasant Hill people, I mean, we all had good livings.

Yeah, we had food always on the table and clothes on our back.

And we were always happy.

- They faced adversity.

They lived and did with what they could, what they had.

When she came she had several strikes against her.

She was a northerner, and she was a woman, and she was a medical doctor.

So she had to win their respect.

And she did.

Right after she arrived, there was a measles epidemic.

So the people in the area saw her in action.

After that, came the Spanish influenza epidemic.

She and her colleague, Elizabeth Fletcher, were two of the few people left standing and they cared for all of the students and the faculty at the academy.

And then they went out into the neighboring cabins to treat folks.

Dr. May worked hard.

She walked up and down these ravines, across creeks, through the woods at night without even knowing exactly where she was going.

Dr. May came to love the people who lived here.

She admired their courage, their perseverance.

- Referring to them as the forgotten people of the Cumberlands, Dr. May recalled in her book, "Dr. Woman of the Cumberlands", she experienced some of the hardest living conditions she had ever seen when visiting the families that made up Pleasant Hill.

Dr. May then decided to stay and help the region out of poverty and improve its quality of life.

More immediately, healthcare issues continued to affect the people.

Tuberculosis infected many in the region.

Luckily, Dr. May had methods to treat the disease establishing her as compassionate and determined doctor.

As the outbreak began to wane, she began teaching them the importance of diet and how proper nutrition can eliminate many healthcare issues.

- My mother had not had an education.

And so Dr. May treated her for the tuberculosis.

She had all of her patients out on the screened in porch all year.

I asked my mother how in the world did she keep warm?

And she said, well, we had warm blankets and a pig.

I said, what's a pig?

And of course it is a stoneware hot water bottle.

They put, it was hollow and they put hot water.

So that's how they kept their feet warm.

She cured my mother within a year.

And then because my mother was virtually homeless, she really became like a mother figure.

She and Ms. Adshead said, and my mother said I didn't die, but I felt like I had died and come to heaven.

She was a very serious woman.

Very knowledgeable, very intelligent woman, but she had a fun side.

And my mother got to witness that.

She felt this was important for the young people that she was working with to train, just to help with the patients.

And so she would have plays.

She loved the idea that people needed to be creative.

- Dr. May approached her work as the need to treat the whole person.

She did care for their medical needs, but she was also equally concerned about their emotional, mental, spiritual health.

And she did everything she could to keep her patients in good spirits.

They did projects, they did parties.

They did crafts.

They had classes.

They rehearsed and performed plays.

They did impromptu skits.

Anything that would help keep the people active and mentally alive.

One of her main teachings was about diet.

She wrote a little book called "The Nature's Way to Health".

And in it, she even gave us menus and recipes.

- She was a visionary even then about food because she promoted fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grain bread.

And once for a time, there was one of the maintenance men at the hospital, he was Seventh-day Adventist, would go in the kitchen and make whole wheat bread.

Really, really good whole wheat bread.

- Dinner was the noon meal, chopped smothered cabbage seasoned with butter and lemon juice, tomato cooked if necessary with raw carrot and lettuce salad.

Cottage cheese mixed with chopped celery, canned peaches, no sugar.

- It might surprise you to learn that despite her medical accomplishments in the Cumberland, Dr. May actually had no intentions of practicing medicine.

Instead she came to teach health and serve a staff physician at Pleasant Hill Academy where her husband Edwin was assigned as principal.

The academy was started by the American Missionary Association in 1884 as a boarding school where disadvantaged rural youth could receive a broad education in liberal arts, science, agricultural training, and home economics.

May and Edwin together applied their knowledge and experience to create a safe learning environment for people of all ages to make a better life for themselves.

- We are in Pioneer Hall, which was built in 1887 and opened in 1889 as a boy's dormitory.

Students came to the academy from all over the area.

Father Dodge arrived here and the academy was established in 1884.

And the students immediately needed a place to live.

The academy reached its peak in enrollment before World War I and there were over 400 students enrolled then, in grades one through 12.

Of course, World War I put a big dent in that population.

And when Edwin Wharton came here as principal in 1917, the campus was in very, very bad shape.

There had been no money for repairs or improvements.

He had trained not only as a pastor, but as an architect, so he was a great person to be called at that time.

So the enrollment at the academy went up and down according to what was happening across the nation.

Father Dodge's daughter, Emma, lived here the rest of her life and she wrote a history of Pleasant Hill.

And she talks about seeing young men, 18, 19 years old down in the primary grades, sitting with little kids because their desire for an education was so strong that they were willing to do that.

The teachers appointed by the American Missionary Association, which founded the academy, took them to heart and tutored them.

And the older boys and girls were able to rise up through the grades faster than normal.

Many of the students were older then what we think of as high school students today.

- Oh, absolutely I knew Dr. May.

She delivered me and we were friends.

Pleasant Hills Academy was a lovely, lovely school.

We had really, really good teachers.

My parents brought me from Uplands Hospital where I was delivered to an apartment in the girls' dormitory.

My dad was working at a Pleasant Hill Academy as the farm and mechanical manager.

And so I lived on the campus for well over 12 years.

- As soon as the academy opened, people came from as far as 50 miles away.

And they came knowing that they could go to school even if they couldn't pay.

Everybody worked.

The students had jobs carrying firewood to the dorm rooms, working on the academy farm, in the garden, in the kitchen.

- And in the dining room, there would be a waitress to two tables and we would bring the food in and it would be placed in front of a faculty member that sat at the head of the table and then the students around the table and the plates passed around to each one.

So that was one of the jobs.

We had a really good English teacher that was the landscaper and she had a group.

And so after class, she would put her scarf on her head and her slack.

And here they'd go out on the campus to do the landscaping.

So yes, everyone had to work.

Laundry, oh we had this.

We went to school on Saturday and then worked on Monday.

And on Mondays, if you were doing a laundry assignment and you could iron 22 shirts, you got the rest of the day off.

In the mornings before school started, Dr. May had a little office in the academy building.

And before school, if you had a sore throat or a ear ache or thought you did, or whatever, you would pay a visit to Dr. May in that office before school.

She had some sort of a little surgery pill that she passed out.

And I really think that some of the visits were just a little sugar pill.

(Ann laughing) - For the people who knew Dr. May it wasn't just her medical achievements that touched them the most.

It was her desire to develop the community through arts and recreational activities that engaged people in new experiences that began a true transformation of the region and cemented her relationship with the area.

- But Dr. May was just always around somewhere you know.

Like coming here, I would walk over here after school.

Ms. Campbell would always give us something to do.

Then I'd walk home.

There's molds, I guess there's still downstairs like a shape of a bowl.

And she'd give us a piece of copper and lit a cross there and show us how to beat that copper down to make that mold.

And little bit of carving.

So I'm a little bit of a wood carver now myself.

- Dr. Mays hobby was weaving.

And she had her looms upstairs in that one bedroom.

What was so neat about that room were there little doors, lots of doors with shelves inside where she kept her wool and all of her equipment and everything she needed.

And I still have some of her woven items.

They very precious to me.

- She had a real sense of humor.

One morning, Dr. May came in for breakfast and sat down and said, well did you hear about this woman that swallowed her watch?

People said, no.

What are you talking about?

Well, she's just waiting for the passage of time.

- You just were always in awe of her and her grace and her giving spirit.

But at the same time, you were so happy to know her because you looked up to her, but still she was so down to earth.

She wasn't like, you know, a god or an angel or anything like that.

You just thought of her and admired her and respected her.

- Sadly, Edwin Wharton died in 1920 and Dr. May contemplated leaving to live with her family out west.

Yet the community banded together to encourage her to stay.

She decided to remain and was joined by Elizabeth Fletcher and Canadian trained, registered nurse, Alice Adshead who helped May start the first hospital in Crossville using $25 per month sent to her by her brother.

The small three room hospital was the first healthcare facility in the region and provided the three ladies with treatment area and a living quarters.

Dr. May's determination was mighty.

And she continued to raise awareness of the medical needs of the Upper Cumberland, raising enough money to acquire land and build the Upland Sanatorium in 1922.

10 years later, she raised even more money during a trip to New England and built a general hospital which opened in 1935.

And later, the Van Dick Annex in 1938.

This facility was ultimately named Cumberland General Hospital to reflect the range of services offered.

- Elizabeth Fletcher sent letters to people all over, especially all over New England.

She had contacts through the American Missionary Association and through Amherst College where her father had served as college librarian.

So she wrote to people, she told him stories of the needs of the people in this area.

And they responded generously.

Dr. May traveled and raised money wherever she spoke.

People were moved by her stories of the conditions of people here, of the poverty, and the illness, and the needs.

And they responded by sending money.

Dr. May never took a salary from the hospital.

She was supported by her brother a wealthy man, William Bernie Cravath.

He wanted to build a hospital for her out in Arizona when her husband died, and she was torn.

She had to decide what she was going to do.

Well by that time, she had earned the love of the people in this area.

And 50 families signed a petition asking her to stay.

They said, we cannot do without you.

Dr. May opened her first hospital in 1921.

It was just two beds on the top floor of an old house on Main Street.

She and Elizabeth Fletcher began seeing patients there.

Alice Adshead, an English woman who had trained in Toronto, came to join them as the nurse.

Those three women worked together the rest of their lives and their buried side by side in the old Pleasant Hill Cemetery.

They did a tremendous amount of work overcoming odds.

They weren't always successful.

One lament of Dr. May was after they opened the TB sanatorium, they got patients who were too far along to be treated successfully and that broke her heart.

But as that work went on, their successes grew and TB was a scourge in this area at the time.

Because of their great fundraising efforts, within a year, they were able, she and Elizabeth and Alice, were able to build a hospital, a real hospital, further down Main Street in Pleasant Hill.

They added to that building with a surgical wing and a maternity wing.

And a few years later, built a very lovely stone TB sanatorium.

It was always Dr. May's goal to serve the whole region.

In the early 1940s, she began planning to move the hospital to Crossville.

Of course, World War II interrupted those plans.

So it wasn't until 1951 that they actually made that plan come true with the establishment of the Cumberland Medical Center in Crossville.

Between 51 and 59, she created a nursing home that would serve the needs of the elderly in the area.

And she created a retirement village.

- This is me and Dr. May in the picture Uplands observed National Hospital Day.

Every year tours of the hospital and open house and served refreshments.

And on the front lawn took pictures of Uplands and Dr. May's babies.

And as you can see on my lapel here, Uplands and Dr. May's babies wore a yellow ribbon.

And this was in May 12th, 1946 and hospital day was looked forward to every year.

People really enjoyed them.

- May Wharton's last project was the creation of May Cravath Wharton's Nursing Home in 1957 in Pleasant Hill.

Which evolved into Uplands Incorporated, a retirement village with homes and apartments.

Dr. May died on November the sixth, 1959, leaving behind a legacy that still impacts lives across Cumberland County today.

Her character lives on in the people she taught, the people she treated, and the people she saved, changing lives for the future generations.

- I was in seventh grade, Dr. May funded a trip for me and three other young girls.

None of us had ever been on an airplane.

None of us had ever been very far out of Pleasant Hill.

So it was truly a trip of a lifetime.

We first went to Washington DC.

We visited the Capitol.

Then from there, we flew to New York City.

We did get to go to Rockefeller Center and saw the Rockettes.

When we were in Canada, we went to Quebec.

And for lunch we had beef tongue sandwiches.

And I thought, oh my goodness inside my head, all these things were going around.

I don't know if I can eat that, but I didn't wanna be impolite.

So I ate it and it was delicious.

We had a wonderful, wonderful time.

I grew up in a household where we helped others.

We loved others.

We tried our best to have servant's hearts.

In this case, it was being done for me and my friends.

And so that really made a great impact on me as growing up and, you know, becoming an adult.

I wanted to do the same thing.

I got my degree in teaching.

I taught a lot of little children who were lower on the socioeconomic scale.

I felt like I was paying it forward.

And that's what the trip did for me too.

- Dr. May gave her life for this community and in return they gave her their love, their respect, their support.

I think it's fair to say the community here was her family.

- But I think she would say that her vision had come true, that the job she started out has been finished by many, many other people.

And she would be very happy to see the hospital doing such a good job with the medical care of all the people in this area.

She affected, influenced, and taught others all the time.

And there were many people who came here because of her.

And many people that had a lot more knowledge and wealth of ways to help people.

There were a lot of women that really never married and it was their life to help others.

So she had a force, a team, always.

And everybody wanted to do what she wanted to do and wanted to help her fulfill that vision.

- Through her knowledge, compassion, and determination Dr. May Wharton changed the Cumberland for the better, creating an enduring legacy in the place she called home.

She dedicated her life to service for the people of this region, making a lasting impact on the education, healthcare, and quality of life for all.

You can learn more about Dr. May and take a deeper look into the episode by visiting wcte.org.

Thank you for watching and I'll see you next time when we go where stories live.

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