Maude E. Callen facts for kids

Maude E. Callen (born November 8, 1898, in Quincy, Florida; died January 23, 1990, in Pineville, South Carolina) was a special kind of nurse called a nurse-midwife. She worked in the South Carolina Lowcountry for more than 60 years. Many people learned about her work when a famous photographer, W. Eugene Smith, published his photo story "Nurse Midwife" in Life magazine on December 3, 1951.

Early Life and Education

Maude E. Callen was born in Quincy, Florida in 1898. She had twelve sisters. Sadly, she became an orphan by the age of six. Her uncle, Dr. William J. Gunn, who was a doctor in Tallahassee, Florida, raised her.

Maude went to Saint Michael's and All Angels Parochial Schools for her early education. After that, she attended Florida A&M University in Tallahassee. She was part of the Alpha Gamma Chi Sorority there. Maude graduated in 1922. She then completed a nursing course at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. She also graduated from the Georgia Infirmary in 1921.

Maude Callen decided to dedicate her life to nursing. She worked in some of the poorest areas in the southern United States. By 1923, she started her own practice as a nurse-midwife. This was in Berkeley County, which was one of the poorest places in South Carolina at that time. She got more training from the Georgia Infirmary in Savannah. She also learned about caring for people with tuberculosis at the Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri.

Personal Life

Maude E. Callen married William Dewer Callen in 1921. They moved to Pineville, South Carolina together. She went there to work as a missionary nurse.

Working as a Nurse-Midwife

A year after finishing her training at the Georgia Infirmary, Callen moved to Pineville. This town is in Berkeley County, South Carolina. She worked there as an Episcopal missionary nurse. She originally planned to stay only for a short time. At that time, she was one of only nine nurse-midwives in all of South Carolina.

Nurse Callen ran a community clinic right out of her home. Her home was many miles away from any hospital. It is thought that she helped deliver between 600 and 800 babies. This was during her 62 years of working. Besides helping people with medical needs, Callen also taught women in the community how to be midwives.

She provided care in people's homes. Her work covered an area of about 400 square miles. The roads there were often muddy. She was like a doctor, a food expert, a counselor, and a friend to thousands of poor patients. Only a small number of her patients were white.

Life in Berkeley County was very tough:

• In Pineville, near the Hell Hole Swamp, houses still used oil lamps for light. They did not have electricity.
• No power lines meant no telephones. People traveled to town by wagon or buggy.
• Nurse Maude remembered that there were only two cars in Berkeley County. None of the roads were paved.
• Many of her patients arrived at her home in oxcarts, sometimes in the middle of the night.
• Callen often had to park her car and walk through mud, woods, and creeks to reach her patients.

In 1936, Callen joined the Berkeley County Health Department. She became a public health nurse. Part of her job was to train midwives across the county. She taught young Black women the right ways to care for pregnant mothers. She also taught them how to help during labor, deliver babies, and care for newborns. Her duties also included giving vaccinations, doing examinations, and keeping records on children's eyes and teeth.

In 1943, Maude Callen took a six-month course. This was at the Maternity Center at the Tuskegee Institute. She received training that was almost as advanced as a doctor's. Because of this, Callen became the second nurse-midwife in South Carolina.

On December 3, 1951, Life magazine published a special story. It was twelve pages long and showed photos of Callen's work. The famous photographer W. Eugene Smith took the pictures. Smith spent weeks with Callen at her clinic and when she visited people in the community. Smith said that the photos he took of Nurse Maude were the "most rewarding" of all his work. He also said that Callen was "the most completely fulfilled person" he had ever known.

After the photo story was published, readers donated over $20,000. This money helped support Callen's work in Pineville. As a result, the Maude E. Callen Clinic opened in 1953. Callen ran the clinic until she retired from public health duties in 1971. The Maude E. Callen Clinic later reopened as a senior center. It served meals and provided comfort until Callen's death in 1990.

Helping Senior Citizens

After she retired in 1971, Callen asked county officials to start a nutrition site for senior citizens. This site began operating in 1980 out of the clinic. Callen volunteered to manage the center. It cooked and delivered meals five days a week. It also provided car service for seniors who needed rides. In 1983, a CBS News TV show called "On the Road" with Charles Kuralt featured her. It said: "At 85, Miss Maude serves meals each weekday to some 50 elderly residents, most of them younger than she is." She once turned down an invitation from President Reagan to visit the White House. She said, "You can't just call me up and ask me to be somewhere. I've got to do my job."

She continued her volunteer work until she passed away in 1990.

Awards and Honors

Maude E. Callen received many awards and honors for her amazing work:

• 1981 – She was named Outstanding Older South Carolinian.
• 1981 – She received the Order of the Palmetto from Governor Richard W. Riley. This is a high honor in South Carolina.
• 1983 – She was featured in a segment of On the Road with Charles Kuralt.
• 1983 – She received an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Clemson University. This was to honor her for "serving the people of Pineville 'who she birthed, nursed, comforted, sometimes clothed and fed, and even taught to read.'"
• 1984 – She received The Alexis de Tocqueville Society Award (United Way of America).
• 1984 – She won The Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged. This award is given out every year by Jefferson Awards.
• 1984 - She also received the American Institute of Public Service Award.
• 1989 – She received an honorary degree from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). The MUSC College of Nursing also created the Maude E. Callen Scholarship for nursing students.
• 1998 - The Callen–Lacey Center for Children was dedicated to her memory. It is an emergency shelter for children in Berkeley County. It is also dedicated to Dr. William H. Lacey.

Callen also won the Berkeley County Chamber of Commerce’s Honorary Citizen's Award.

Quotes

Let me live in my house by the side of the road and be a friend to man.

—Maude E. Callen