Around here, everyone knows John Wayne was born in Winterset. In fact, there’s a museum on Winterset’s main drag, John Wayne Drive, to prove it. The year was 1907, and his birth name was Marion Robert Morrison. He didn’t stay long, which is not his fault. (I once heard it was only three months, but the official story is three years, so he was either a baby or a kid when his family moved away.) He never returned, which actually is his fault.
Ten years before Morrison’s arrival, George L. Stout, known as the Monuments Man, was born in Winterset—probably not in a hospital, but at home, like Morrison.
Stout did stick around for a while. He graduated from Winterset High in 1915, went on to Grinnell College and the University of Iowa, then Harvard University, where he earned a master’s degree and became an expert in art conservation. Portrayed by George Clooney in the movie, “Monuments Men,” Stout is recognized today for the repatriation of art plundered by the Nazis. His parents, grandparents, and younger brother are buried in the Winterset Cemetery, so he undoubtedly came back to town from time to time.
I was not born in Winterset, but my children were, in 1975, 1979, and 1982, all three delivered at Madison County Memorial Hospital by the same physician. I was, by the way, the first local laboring mother to utilize Lamaze breathing techniques. I was so pumped after each delivery I hopped off the table and walked down the hall to my room on the arm of my husband at the time. Hospital staff were shocked—as was he.
Having taken up quilting when my firstborn was a toddler, by 1979, when Mary came along, I was a fairly skilled practitioner. My Winterset quilting friends had to drive my entries to the Iowa State Fair fairgrounds for me that year because Mary and I were still in the hospital. (She was born on August 6, and Entry Day was August 7.)
I’m happy to report that my first full-size quilt won a blue ribbon.
In 1985, local deliveries at Madison County Memorial, which was established in 1949, had declined, as women drove to Des Moines to give birth, and malpractice insurance costs climbed. In other words, local GPs stopped delivering babies. The labor and delivery rooms, which I can still see vividly in my mind’s eye, were repurposed.
Let’s pause a moment and recognize the significance of the almost 40-year-old sea change described in the paragraph above.
Unless delivered at home by a midwife, or in an emergency situation at the hospital, no one will ever be born in Winterset again.
Who, I ask, will step in to the formidable boots of George Stout and John Wayne?
What a fascinating story and perspective on a piece of Winterset history. Thanks!