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Dr. Yvonne Thornton
11/01/2011 - By Christine Burke Eskwitt
Photo: McKay Imaging (mckayimaging.com)
Setting the bar high and having it all in a life well-lived
"Parents don't have high-enough expectations; they give up on their kids," says Dr.Yvonne S. Thornton, 63, author of the new book Something to Prove: A Daughter's Journey to Fulfill a Father's Legacy. "No, I'm not a tiger mom; I'm a lioness. I growl when I need to growl, and I set the bar high."
That strategy worked for her: Her son,Woody, now 32 and training to be a neurosurgeon, was a national junior chess champion who graduated cum laude from Harvard. Kimberly, her 30-year-old daughter, also a chess star, graduated from Stanford, received a master's degree from Columbia and is now attending Howard University College of Medicine. Both were A students who began classical piano lessons before the age of 2.
You may have heard of Thornton – Long Branch native, Monmouth College graduate and author of the 1995 memoir The Ditchdigger's Daughters. It topped best-seller lists, got Thornton a seat on Oprah’s sofa and was made into an award-winning movie. The book and movie tell the story of Donald Thornton,who with his wife, Itasker, raised five daughters on a ditchdigger's salary. His only dream was to see the day when each of them would be called Dr. Thornton. The Ditchdigger’s Daughters was critically acclaimed, translated into 19 languages, has never been out of print and was turned into a television movie produced by the Family Channel in 1997, for which Kimberly Elise won Best Supporting Actress at the 1997 Cable ACE Awards.
Yvonne Thornton was the first of the five Dr. Thorntons. With the help of money earned while performing in the all girl family band, the Thornton Sisters, she graduated with both an M.D. and an M.P.H. from Columbia University. In 1981, Dr. Thornton became the first African-American woman in the United States to become board certified in maternal-fetal medicine. She subsequently practiced at New York Hospital-Cornell University Medical Center in New York, Morristown Memorial Hospital in New Jersey and St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Medical Center in New York. Her expertise as a pioneer in chorionic villus sampling, a form of prenatal diagnosis to determine chromosomal or genetic disorders in a fetus, drew the attention of Oprah Winfrey, who first invited her on her show in 1993.
Thornton is now a renowned specialist and clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at New York Medical College and Westchester Medical Center. She has personally delivered 5,542 babies and supervised over 12,000 deliveries.
Something to Prove picks up where The Ditchdigger's Daughters left off. The memoir tells the story of Thornton's struggle to achieve the goals her father laid out for her in childhood and, at the same time, balance a demanding medical career with the challenge of managing a home, marriage to a fellow physician, and raising her children. Thornton says she decided to write the new book after readers of her earlier memoir wanted to understand how to "have it all."
LIM: So, before we begin, can you comment, as a distinguished physician, on the current state of health care?
YT: There is no health care. It’s a business now. Health care has been perverted, corrupted. I say this with a hole in my heart. I went into medicine to take care of people, not to worry about coding or billing or whether my patients had money enough. I thought, all they had to do was come and say they were ill and we would take care of them.
Over the years I determined that I wanted to be an academic physician. I knew I wanted to teach. Some people are more in it for the money and that bothers me. If you’re a physician, you’re not going to starve but, what if a patient can’t pay you? Are you not going to take care of them?
LIM: What do you think of the medical malpractice insurance situation, especially here in New Jersey?
YT: Malpractice insurance is forcing many doctors out of medicine or at least out of the field of maternal/fetal health. I wonder who is going to take care of our mothers and our babies. Healthy People 2010, a national plan that strives to improve the health of our nation, had a ten year agenda to improve the health of all Americans and reduce the maternal mortality rate to 5 deaths per 100,000 deliveries. At the time the study was established, the rate was 7 or 8 deaths per 100,000. We thought in ten years it would go down. Now, in New York City, the maternal mortality rate per 100,000 has gone up to 13! The mortality rate is increasing because of growing health disparities, dichotomies in care with regard to the haves and the have nots. Poor women in New York City are dying as if they were in some third world country.
LIM: Is there a bright spot in health care today?
YT: I have to think about that. I think the ratio is shifting. Thirty or forty years ago medicine was a calling. Today it is a business. How am I going to get paid? What will my lifestyle be like? That’s what new physicians are spending too much time thinking about. I still think there are good people out there who want to be physicians and will sacrifice their personal convenience to take care of patients, but those numbers are dwindling. It’s an attitude. It’s the me, me, me, me generation, and then, after me, comes the patient.
LIM: Tell me where you grew up.
YT: My parents built the house we lived in on Ludlow Street in Long Branch.We had previously beenliving in a housing project in Long Branch that was not conducive to raising young girls who were not going to become teenage mothers or high school dropouts so they plucked us out and we moved. My parents built that house on the other side of town, on property that they acquired for $200 at a tax auction. It was right off of Joline Avenue and across the street from the Gregory Elementary School. We were so close to the school that if there were three bells ringing before school was about to start we’d wait for the second bell before running across the street to class.
LIM: Your husband, Dr. Shearwood J. McClelland, is the director of Orthopaedic Surgery at Harlem Hospital Center in Harlem, New York. How did you meet?
YT: Not surprisingly, we met at medical school. I never saw a boy. Daddy said, “Boys and books don’t mix.” When I went to undergraduate school at Monmouth College, I lived at home. I was never interested in boys. The mantra at home was to get that MD after your name before anything else. In 1969, I was accepted to Columbia University of Physicians and Surgeons and went off to live in New York. I met Shearwood at Columbia and it was a strictly platonic relationship. We became really good friends and then one day he popped the question. I was shocked, but I knew I had to get that MD after my name. He said, “Yvonne, what can I tell you? It doesn’t matter how long you need but you are the only woman I will ever love.” He proposed in 1971. We were married in 1974, a year after I got that MD after my name. Our wedding was just like I’d always imagined it would be, like in “The Sound of Music.” We’ve been married for 37 years.
LIM: In 1979, instead of settling in to a comfortable suburban medical practice, you and your husband did something surprising.
YT: Yes,my husband is kind of a Boy Scout in his way.We had no sort of obligation to serve our country related to our educations or anything like that whatsoever. Many physicians who had servedduring Vietnam had finished their service and there was a need for physicians in the military. Shearwood just felt it was the right thing to do. My husband went to Princeton and then trained at Columbia, which has one of the best orthopaedic programs in the country. The military was great experience for him, as an orthopaedic surgeon.At first, Shearwood just wanted me to be his dependent.We had been married for five years.We had our son Woody. Shearwood said that he would enlist in the military and I would follow him - but I’m nobody’s dependent. I said that if I was going it would be on my own terms.We volunteered for active duty in the United States Navy. I received a commission as a Lieutenant Commander in the Medical Corps and was stationed at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. It was typical of my husband to do something like this. Today, he could practice anywhere in the country but he practices at Harlem Hospital. It’s where he wants to be. You don’t find people like him anymore.
LIM: Tell me about powerful women and having it all.
YT: When I was growing up you needed to get that 'Mrs.' in front of your name. It was your meal ticket. You needed to align yourself with a man and men knew it. You would marry and change your name. That was expected. But my mother said, “if you’re a doctor, you don’t need to change your name.” I love being Mrs. McClelland but I am also Dr. Thornton. It is a different persona. Back in the day, women were not expected to be business leaders but to be cheerleaders. If there was only so much money, the boy in the family got the money to go to college. The girl was expected to get married. There were two acceptable professions for women – being a nurse or being a teacher. Women didn’t grow up to become doctors; they married doctors. That’s the culture I grew up in. Nowadays, look around. Surgeon general, supreme court justices – female. Condoleezza Rice – female. All powerful women. But how many of these women married and had children? Very few. That’s what my new book, Something to Prove: A Daughter’s Journey to Fulfill a Father’s Legacy, is all about. We can have it all. You don’t have to sacrifice your biological imperative. Never underestimate yourself or your abilities. That was my father’s legacy to me.
LIM: Your books illustrate how you were influenced by your parents. A generation later, how do you influence your children?
YT: Our kids have so many more advantages, but they are also surrounded by many more negative influences as well. After I had my children, I learned that it’s easier to be a double board certified maternal fetal physician than a good parent. Doctors spend years in training but you don’t get any training to raise your kids. Both of my parents died young so I didn’t have them around to give me advice. I knew how to deliver babies but I didn’t know how to raise my kids. I only knew how my parents raised me so that’s how I raised my children – lovingly strict. We all know children of successful professional people who are dysfunctional. There are too many suicides and too much emotional illness in this generation. Parents are putting their energies into their careers, into running successful businesses, into building their medical practices. They are absent from their children's lives. Their children are seeking attention. My mother would say that no amount of success in your profession can ever make up for being a failure at home. Her mantra for us was to be doctors but also that we should be lucky enough to have a family, too. I didn’t know what she really meant until I had kids of my own and I looked around at some of my colleagues whose marriages were disintegrating, whose children were in rehab. My father had to work two jobs just to make ends meet. I knew we didn’t have any money. Our kids knew we weren’t poor. How do you raise your kids when they have everything?We sat them down and told them you have to be the best that you can be. Success is not genetically transferable. That’s a very important concept. We told them that the success we achieved was something that we worked very hard for. As soon as they could hear my voice – and my daughter Kim says that was “in utero” – I told them that we could afford to support them in whatever they wanted to be as long as it had an MD after their name. People chuckle but I found joy in what I do for a living and I wanted my children to feel the same happiness that comes from helping people, not to say that bankers and builders don’t help people, too.
LIM: Are you a tiger mom?
YT: Well, I actually did have a conversation with Amy Chua. She calls herself the Tiger Mom. I preferto call myself the lioness. I growl when I need to growl and I set the bar high. Parents don’t have high enough expectations. They give up on their kids. People ask me how do you do all you do and still raise good children? I hope readers will take away from the new book the message that was passed down from my parents to me and from me to my children: with hard work, determination and education, you can achieve anything.
When my children were young, they had to produce. My father used to say, “I don’t want to see any curved letters coming into this house, only pointy letters.” The B’s and C’s were curved. The A’s were pointy. If I got a 98, he’d say what happened to the other two points. He would say, and I’m not being a racist, “if you get a B and a blonde haired, blue-eyed male gets a B and there’s only one position, you’re not going to get it. You need to get the A plus, plus plus. You need to be the best, you can’t be second rate.” I learned from my father that excellence is the answer to racism, sexism and misogyny.
LIM: What are the values you’ve tried to instill in your children?
YT: When my husband and I went back to school to get our master’s degrees, our kids were in high school They looked at us and said, “Are you still studying?” We say that learning is ongoing. It never ends. People ask me how did you keep your kids on the straight and narrow and I say the same way my parents kept me on the right path – by being a good role model. Remember Frank Perdue? “It takes a tough man to raise a tender chicken.”Well, it takes a tough parent to raise a good kid. You can’t be their friend.You need to give them structure and discipline. My children were taught music at an early age. It gave them focus. They learned the mathematics of music. It showed them that they could do what they were required to do and be poised in the public eye. I tell the story in my book about Woody and Kimmy being into Nintendo. I didn’t think my parents would think very highly of them spending time playing Nintendo. I thought of chess as an alternative. Woody started to play and became a US National Junior Chess Champion. My lesson to my kids is to never do anything mediocre. The essence of the human spirit is that we don’t know what we can do until we try. This is the lesson I try to share in the new book. You don’t know until you try. Very successful women say they can’t be married and have a family and a career. Why not? You’re selling yourself short. When you set the bar high for your children, they will meet it every time. If that’s what you expect, that’s what they can do.
LIM: You’ve written two books and been nominated for a Pulitzer, you are a double board certified physician, and you’ve been on Oprah. When are you going to be on Dancing with the Stars?
YT: Believe it or not, I did win the New Jersey State Dance Championship last October doing the cha cha and the mambo. I love ballroom dancing. It’s an outlet for me, therapy, a release, whatever.
LIM: Do you ballroom dance with your husband?
YT: No I don’t dance with my husband. It makes me laugh because we’re black people, right, and we’re supposed to have rhythm, supposed to know how to dance. My husband does not. He’s tried. He took lessons for eight years. If we go to a wedding, he can do a fox trot or a waltz but left to himself he “bakes seat” as my kids like to say. I go to dance competitions with my instructor, Fred Santiago, and it’s a pro-am kind of competition. I love it. I still play my sax. I play folk guitar. I also still sing a bit.
LIM: So, what’s your next new thing?
YT: I have been approached by two producers about making 'Ditchdigger’s Daughter' into a Broadway musical. They want to tell the story through the music of the all girl Thornton Sisters band. They’ve warned me that it would take almost a decade and $10 million to bring up the curtain. I am humbled to think that someone would think the book could be adapted into a Broadway musical, so we’ll see.
My life has been so eclectic but I’m just happy now. You have to throw yourself into life and be enthusiastic. I’ve been going since I was in kindergarten so I took a year off. My son is 33. My daughter is 31. I’m 63. It’s just a number. I’m healthy. My husband is healthy. He’s still practicing at Harlem Hospital and he loves it.We’ve lived in the same house in Bergen County for 30 years. God has been good to me and I am blessed. Though I may not be a truly religious person, I am a spiritual person and I believe that there is a force out there that guides us, and I believe that we should listen.
FAVORITE BOOK
Non-fiction is The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
My favorite fictional book is Rightfully Mine by the wonderful writer Doris Mortman.
FAVORITE MOVIE
“Gladiator” is the ultimate story of rising up and overcoming adversity. “October Sky” tells the story of someone who had a dream and realized that dream. And also, another favorite, “Something the Lord Made.”
FAVORITE FOOD
Lasagna, but I like all food.
FAVORITE MUSIC
Classical music is soothing for my neurological system, and I also enjoy contemporary jazz.
FAVORITE HOBBY
Ballroom dancing, tennis, needlepoint.
THREE PEOPLE TO DINE WITH
Johnny Mathis, Johnny Mathis and Johnny Mathis.
WHAT IS YOUR PET PEEVE?
I wish we could bring back telephone booths. I am tired of being an unwilling participant in other people’s conversations.
FAVORITE NUMBER
Nine, because it always comes back to itself
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