“I’ll be right over” 101
“I’ll be right over” by Meg Downey Blunt and at times acerbic, she was also quick to laugh, a distinctive throaty chuckle. Dr. Josephine Evarts lived by the mantra “I’ll be right over.” She loved children and animals, and like a fierce archangel, fumed over the stupidity of the human race. The no-nonsense “Dr. Jo,” in more than 50 years as a physician, helped thousands of people in New York’s Harlem Valley and northwestern Connecticut. As a country doctor, Evarts, treated “whatever comes in,” which was mostly bruised souls. “If they fall downstairs and get a black and blue mark, they want you to look at it,” she said. “I don’t have a very healing look, but I never refuse to see someone. They like to feel somebody loves them, that they have someone to lean on.”
Figure 1. Dr. Josephine Evarts at her Millerton office late in her career. Photograph. Bob Kristofik, Poughkeepsie Journal.
Evarts, who died in 1983 at age 81, did whatever needed to be done to serve—whether it meant getting down on the floor to deliver a baby, defying state bureaucrats to protect mentally ill patients, or milking a cow on behalf of a hospitalized farmer. “You need a lot of energy,” she said in
