Bahama Village midwife delivered more than 100 babies

BY MANDY BOLEN

 

Citizen Staff

 

KEY WEST

 

The 200 block of Truman Avenueis a study in contrasts. A Hummer is parked along the curb while rusting tin roofs cover parts of the few houses not yet bought, renovated and sold. The aged Bethel AME Church endures at the entrance to the block, but in the middle, old homes are becoming new condominiums and the ceaseless thunder of power tools rattle Mary Weech's jalousies, making it difficult for the 76-year-old woman to hear her telephone ring.

 

The black telephone on the end table is an upgraded version of the rotary-dial one that used to ring in the middle of the night, announcing the impending birth of another Conch.

 

"Oh Lord, babies come at odd hours," Weech said Friday, thinking back on her 25 years as a certified midwife, and trying to recall the more than 100 babies she's brought into the world. "And if the family didn't have a phone, someone always came runnin'."

 

Weech, one of almost 30 people who were honored Friday at a dinner celebrating Black History Month, was graduated from the Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery in 1950, wearing a crisp, white uniform and hat, posing proudly for the sepia-toned photograph that still sits, framed, on a table in her foyer.

 

"Back then, doctors weren't so interested in delivering babies, so the mothers would meet with the doctors once a week and we'd get a report," she said. "Then when the time came, we'd get $50 per baby."

 

There were about eight midwives to deliver babies throughout the Florida Keys. Weech remembers driving up and down the highway at all hours. She never knew whether she had time to get home to tend to her own children before the new arrival would take its first screaming breath.

 

"Sometimes I'd have a father at my front door, hurrying me to his house," she said, remembering when children were born in their parents' bedrooms rather than a hospital room, and harried fathers waited outside or downstairs.

 

"We always had to carry our bag that had everything in it — everything," she said. "We had to pad the bed, and carry our own aprons, gloves and umbilical cord tape."

 

After a baby was born, Weech and her colleagues would visit the mother and child every day, " 'till that naval cord dropped," she said. Because until the umbilical cord healed, there was always a threat of infection.

 

"It's a pleasure to bring a child into the world," she said, and although doctors retired the midwife position in 1976 when they began delivering babies themselves — and charging $1,000 — Weech is sure she would remember how to do it if the situation arose once again in her neighborhood.

 

Weech did not always live on Truman Avenue. She grew up on Olivia Streetnear the cemetery, but moved with her family to Fort Village apartments in 1942, when the public housing projects were brand new. There, she met Edward Weech, a soldier and saxophonist, who became her husband. He played jazz with several other Key West musicians all over town, particularly at Two Friends restaurant, as Mary Weech remembers.

 

"We got married in February 1952, and he got sent to Korea two days later," Weech said. "I didn't see him again until Thanksgiving dinner that year."

 

Edward Weech returned from Korea wounded, but the family continued to grow to include three children. They all eventually moved to the Robert Gabriel housing neighborhood, where they stayed until Mary's mother died in the Truman Avenuehome in 1967.

 

The woman known to an entire neighborhood as "Mrs. Weech" or "Miss Mary," has been in that home ever since.

 

"I grew up on Julia Streetand she was on Truman, where she still is now," said Key West resident Norma Jean Sawyer. "She's got the most beautiful voice you ought to hear, and she still sings in the choir at St. Peter's. She'd do anything for the church."

 

Mary Weech's nursing certification still hangs framed above the couch, as do the graduation photos of her three children. Newer pictures of seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren constantly are being added to the collection.

 

Her nights no longer are interrupted by a distraught father-to-be, and her days are filled with beloved Bingo games, church services on Center Streetand events at the American Legion Hall.

 

She doesn't remember all of the children she delivered, and many of the mothers have died.

 

"But one of the boys I brought into the world is my mechanic, and there's others still all over town," she said.

 

mbolen@keysnews.com

 

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