Al’s
LAWN & GARDEN NOW HIRING: LANDSCAPERS Apply with resume to 359 Grand Ave. E Chatham
www.alslawnandgarden.ca
352-4955
Home of the $ 3 WATCH BATTERY - installed! (incl. tax)
YOUR Independent Community Newspaper THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2016
Vol. 4 Edition 41
By Jim Blake jim@chathamvoice.com
Jim Blake/The Chatham Voice
Almost-one-year-old Kiroa MacRae of Chatham celebrated her first Thanksgiving Day dinner at the St. Joseph’s Spirit and Life Centre Friday. Turkey and all the trimmings were served to some 200 people, courtesy of Entegrus and St. Vincent de Paul. More than 40 Entegrus employees took part in the event, now in its fourth year.
If Emer Dudley could sing and Kathy Skinner liked history, the medical community in Wallaceburg would have been deprived of two of its most dedicated members. Instead, Dr. Dudley and registered nurse Skinner are celebrating a combined 100 years in the medical field, most of them in Wallaceburg. The Wallaceburg Community Medical Centre duo took time recently to look back on their long careers as well as the future of health care. Emer was living in her birthplace of County Cork, Ireland and desperately wanted to be a teacher. “I wanted to be a National School (elementary) Teacher, but if you couldn’t sing you had to have incredibly high marks and I didn’t. I was top middle of my classes. You actually had to pass a singing exam and I couldn’t sign my way out of a paper bag. I tell people I went to medical school because it was easier,” she laughed. Although she was a raised in a medical family, her physician mother
FALL FLOORING EVENT 100% Waterproof
$
ft. 3.29 sq.
Gravitate Saxony/Textured Carpet
$
2.69 sq. ft.
www.batteryboy.ca
FREE!
A dynamic medical duo
It’s turkey time!
Floorte Luxury Vinyl Plank
131 Park Ave. E., Chatham 519-354-4127
didn’t want her to enter the profession. “My mother did everything to discourage me,” she said. “She would take me up at 3 a.m. when she had to see a patient just to let me know what it was like.” Her family’s home contained her mother’s medical practice. “The office was in the house and we had to stitch people up every Sunday because the hurling pitch was behind our house. We would keep getting these guys coming up to the house with the blood running down their head.” “My father would occasionally answer the door and most of the guys didn’t know that it was actually my mother was the doctor. He’d answer the door and we’d hear this thud and think ‘oh no, not again’ because my father would faint at the sight of blood.” “The poor guy at the door would say ‘is it so bad that the doctor fainted?’ and I would just say, no he’s not the doctor and tell them to come in.” “Once I got into medicine, I loved it. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”
Kathy started nursing training in 1956 at Public General Hospital in Chatham. “I didn’t see any use in learning more history and my friend had started in nursing and was having fun so I enrolled. We lived in residence at the time.” She was one of 21 students who graduated in 1959 but was doing practical nursing long before her three years were up. “We were thrown in the deep end,” she said. “We had an overall supervisor but we were in charge of floors and teaching other nurses after our first year.” After working in Chatham and the United States, she came back to Wallaceburg in 1975, working in the intensive care and emergency departments at Sydenham District Hospital until retiring 14 years ago. She was retired for all of two weeks when she joined Dr. Dudley. “I didn’t know what to do with myself, I’d always worked.” “She was snapped up pretty quickly,” Emer said. “Kathy was reason I came to Wallaceburg.”
Continued on page 2
Walk through our doors and discover why Chatham-Kent has made Sacwal their choice for 37 years!
In stock LVP Floorte
3 designer colours
$
3.29 sq. ft.
519-354-6121 701 St. Clair St., Chatham www.sacwalflooringcentres.com
HOURS: MON.-THURS. 9AM-6PM, FRI. 9AM-8PM, SAT. 9AM-5PM ®™Trademarks of AIR MILES International Trading B.V. Used under license by LoyaltyOne, Co. and Sacwal Flooring Centres.