Ralph Waldo Fowler, Sr. (1898-1967)

Married to Irma Dobbs

Also available online at http://ralphfowler.com/irma

One of the finest representatives of the medical profession in Cobb County was Dr. Ralph Waldo Fowler. The son of Jesse Lee and Eula Boring Fowler, Dr. Ralph was born in the northern part of Cobb County July 5, 1898. His father was a teacher at the Benson Schoolhouse and owned a modest cotton farm on Bells Ferry Road, a good two-hour ride by buggy from the town of Marietta.

He and his sister Sally lived the happy lives of country children of the turn of the century. They attended a one-room schoolhouse near their home place until Dr. Ralph reached high school age. The family then moved closer to town so that Marietta High School would be more easily accessible. The Fowlers purchased the lovely old home on Kennesaw Avenue which is now the Marietta Garden Center.

The winter of 1899 was the coldest ever recorded in Cobb County with the temperature reaching 13 degrees below zero. Dr. Ralph used to tell of his mother’s holding him in her arms in front of the fire all night long while his father supplied the wood whose warmth kept the frail child alive.

During Dr. Ralph’s senior year in high school, he was asked to help an entering freshman student with her admission examinations. Her name was Irma Dobbs and she had just moved in from the little country community of Blackwells and needed to be caught up in her studies. He first met his future wife over a mathematics book.

Ralph graduated with first honors and was class valedictorian. His decision to become a doctor was reached while a student at the University of Georgia in Athens. He completed two years of pre-medical training there before transferring to Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. His first year at Medical College of GA was cut short by a serious illness which forced him to drop out and return home to convalesce. The following fall he enrolled at Atlanta Medical College, now Emory University School of Medicine. He was a member of Kapa Psi medical fraternity and graduated first in the class of 1922. He received special recognition as a member of the scholastic honorary now known as Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Fraternity. He served an internship and a one-year residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.

Dr. Ralph used to relate amusing anecdotes to his children concerning his school days. One summer during his pre-medical years he was a Bible salesman in the bayou country of Louisiana and Mississippi. He credited his amazing empathy and insight into the problems of the people who came to him during his years of medical practice to the elementary psychology he learned during that period.

The little freshman student from Blackwells kept a primary place in his life throughout his college and medical school years. She went to college and graduated from Georgia State College for Women in Milledgeville and taught school in the mill section of Atlanta. The two of them continued to see each other throughout her college days.

Like all long courtships, however, this one had its ups and downs. Dr. Ralph used to tell of the time when he was a freshman in medical school and was commuting between Emory and Marietta on the streetcar. He was studying gross anatomy and decided to bring home the arm of his cadaver to give his girl a good scare. Home he bore it on the streetcar carefully wrapped and tied. The joke misfired when Miss Irma refused to go out with the medical student and the cadaver’s arm. One had to go. He was hard put to know what to do with his burden and finally, after considering many alternatives, disposed of it in a local well.

The brand-new physician hung out his shingle for general medicine and surgery in an upstairs office over the original Hodges Drugstore on the Square in Marietta. He was one of only a half dozen doctors in the county. Soon after becoming established, he began to court Miss Irma in earnest, and after wining her away from the most persistent of his rivals, a professional baseball player with the Detroit Tigers, they eloped and were married in Birmingham, Alabama.

The couple set up housekeeping in the former Baptist parsonage on Church Street in Marietta. After several years, they bought a large 3 story Victorian house located on the site of the present First Baptist Church. Their first son, Ralph junior, was born at home in January 1928

In 1930, the providential event occurred which turned Dr. Ralph’s career to pediatrics, and which endeared him to a generation of mothers and babies. He developed a streptococcal infection of the tendons of his right hand, which resulted in a permanently stiffened middle finger. He no longer was able to perform delicate surgical procedures. He went to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he took a six-month pediatrics residency. After his return to Marietta, Dr. Ralph limited his practice to general medicine and pediatrics.

While at Washington University, he studied under Doctors Mariott and Hartman, leaders in their field at the time. As a result of some experimental studies conducted by his mentors in St. Louis, he introduced a radical new infant formula to Georgia. He was the first doctor to prescribe and use a formula based on evaporated milk in the state.

At the end of 1930, Dr. Ralph and several other local doctors, among them Dr George Hagood, Dr. L.L. Welch, and Dr. A. H. Fowler, formed a group and built the Marietta Hospital. This modern 25 bed facility superseded the Nolen Hospital on Church Street and was the only hospital in Cobb County until well after the end of the Second World War. The present Doctors’ Office Building occupies the original site.

Dr. Ralph’s second son, Robert Dobbs Fowler, was born in 1930, shortly after his parents return from St. Louis. The next few years passed swiftly and soon their third son, John, was on the way. In 1934, shortly before the birth of John, the Fowlers bought the Rambo home on McDonald Street named “Mockingbird Hill”. Two years later in October 1936, their only daughter Phyllis was born.

Ralph was very witty and was noted as a serious physician, but at home, he liked to have fun with his children. One time he purchased a new tractor against Irma’s recommendation and promptly took it out and turned it over. When Irma asked how the tractor got on its side, he said he let his son Ralph, Jr. try to drive it, and he had turned it over. The boys were sworn to secrecy if they ever wanted to drive it.

For many years Dr. Ralph played an important part in his community. He served on the Marietta Board of Education and on the Marietta Board of Lights and Water. He was one of the founders and the first president of the Marietta Kiwanis Club. He continued his strong interest in hospital facilities for the people of his county and served on the Kennestone Hospital Authority for many years. His name is still shown on the large plaque in the lobby as one of the hospital founders.

Dr. Ralph actively involved himself in professional groups. He was president of the Cobb County Medical Society and the Seventh District Medical Society. He served as a Councilor of the Medical Association of Georgia and was appointed Advisor to the State Woman’s Auxiliary.

His eldest son, Ralph attended college at University of the South in Sewanee Tennessee at the age of 16 and ultimately followed his father’s pediatric footsteps joining him in practice in 1960. Robert (Bob) also attended University of the South in Sewanee and entered the newspaper field after becoming editor of the Marietta Journal. He went on to own and publish the Gwinnett Daily News in Lawrenceville, before selling it to the NY Times in 1988. John attended University of the South for two years, then transferred to University of GA. He returned to Marietta where he entered the real estate and insurance business. Phyllis attended Randolph-Macon Women’s College, the University of Georgia, and the Medical College of Georgia and went on to become a nurse. She moved to Athens with her husband in 1967.

Dr. Ralph’s wife Irma was a victim of a tragic accident on Halloween night in 1963. There was an explosion caused by a faulty natural gas line in Atherton’s Drugstore on the square in Marietta and Irma had just stopped to get the newspaper. Her car was found still running on the curb when the explosion took place. Two years later, Ralph remarried Jewell A. Guest of Moultrie, Georgia. Two years after that he died in October 1967.

Dr. Ralph was “G-Daddy” to three grandsons and five granddaughters. Each Christmas and Easter the family gathered at Mockingbird Hill and celebrated the holidays with their grandparents. He often enjoyed showing his grandchildren his large vegetable garden which he maintained until the last year of his life. This gentle, good man raised many more children than his own. In his last years some of the babies he had cared for were bringing their own children to Dr. Ralph and his son, Ralph Jr, who even continued caring for their children’s children.