Ida wiped tears from her eyes at the man’s response, glad that she had lived long enough to see significant developments in the field of treating leprosy.
Much to Ida’s delight, Dr. Brand stayed on at Vellore and performed many more such operations, finally giving leprosy patients hope for the future.
It was not the future, however, but the past that everyone was contemplating three years later when Vellore celebrated a special day, January 1, 1950—exactly fifty years since Ida Scudder had returned to India to start her medical work.
The governor of Madras and his wife arrived to attend the ceremony. “You are one of those rare spirits,” the governor told Ida from the platform, “that is sent to the earth once in a generation.”
And what had Ida accomplished in that generation? She had started with one housemaid to help her as she built a medical empire. Now there were forty-three doctors on the medical college staff and forty-four on the hospital roster. Over half were Indian doctors, and many of them were graduates of the medical college. The small clinic Ida had opened after her father’s death had grown into a 544-bed hospital staffed by 108 nurses and 174 nursing students. Two hundred doctors had graduated from the medical college, and two hundred seventy-five nurses from the nurses’ training school. Now they were spread all over India and beyond. Ida thought of the times she had wanted to give up, but the recollection of those three dead women and their babies had spurred her on.
Yes, God is good, Ida thought. He has done more than I could ever have hoped or dreamed.
For Ida there was one crowning moment to the celebration. The medical college had been on probation since it had become a coeducational institution and money was raised to upgrade both the buildings and the faculty. On the day that the governor of Madras arrived, so did a special message from the Madras State Office. It was official: the government recognized the permanent affiliation of the Vellore Christian Medical College to the University of Madras.
This was the best gift Ida could have hoped for. It meant that the medical college was at last on a secure footing. Ida had been right to endorse the move to open the school’s doors to men. It had saved the college and recognized the changing nature of Indian society. As Ida listened to Dr. Lazarus speak, she smiled as she thought about how this petite woman was the leader of not only the female students but also the male students. The men hadn’t stolen the school away, as Lucy had predicted.
Ida should have expected that there would be other tributes to her fifty years of service, but she was still horrified when the citizens of Vellore announced that they had raised enough money to erect a bronze statue of her in the town.
“Oh, don’t do that!” Ida exclaimed at the news. “Do something of value. Something for the hospital.”
In the end, when Ida continued to protest the planned statue, the money was put toward building a new road opposite the hospital. Nothing, however, could stop the people of Vellore from calling it the “Dr. Ida Scudder Road.”
The first time Ida drove over the road she laughed. How wonderful it would have been to have had roads like this when she went out on the first Roadsides. She thought of the springless bandies she covered hundreds of miles in and the one-cylinder Peugeot that sputtered its way along the rutted roads.
At times throughout the jubilee year, Ida allowed herself to reminisce. But as always, she was much more comfortable thinking ahead to the next challenge.
Chapter 16
Her Legacy Remained Alive
Ida continued to visit Vellore and watch the new developments taking place there. On one visit in February, she was driven sixteen miles to Kavanur, where the hospital was opening a new rural health center. Ida had followed this project carefully, and she was pleased with what they were doing. The health center was staffed by third-year nursing students, who took turns living there for a month at a time. During their stay the students treated patients and helped the local people understand basic health concepts so that they could prevent illness. They gave health talks to mothers and gathered men to build better toilet systems and make new stoves that did not smoke up their homes. They also worked with the local midwives, encouraging them to use clean instruments and cloths.
Ida’s next trip down from Hill Top was to tour the new Leprosy Rehabilitation Center, with its neat row of whitewashed huts. This was Dr. Brand’s special project. In the time since Ida had watched him perform his first hand surgery, he had perfected the art of restoring the use of feet as well as hands. But because of the stigma of leprosy, even with hands and feet that once again functioned, many of the patients were unable to find work. Because they were lepers, no one wanted to employ those on whom Paul Brand had operated. The rehabilitation center was designed to address this situation, training twenty-four men at a time to do carpentry, masonry, toy making, and painting. This also was something that delighted Ida. What could be better than helping a man back onto his feet and then helping him find a way to once again look after himself and his family?
As 1950 drew to a close, another great celebration was held. This time it was not to commemorate Ida’s fifty years in India but to celebrate her eightieth birthday. Ida traveled down from Hill Top on December 6 to give herself some time to “rest” before the event. Of course she did not rest. Ida busied herself visiting the wards and catching up on news from her past staff and students.
When the sun rose on December 9, Ida was wide awake. I am eighty years old today, she thought as she lay in bed. If only I had another eighty years to spend serving India!
From the moment Ida got out of bed, she was treated like royalty. The students had made her a beautiful “birthday chair,” a high-backed wooden chair covered with woven flowers that Ida sat on as she listened to speech after speech from colleagues, servants, students, residents of Vellore, and former patients.
The organizing committee had saved the best until last. At six in the evening, hundreds of people gathered on the nurses’ badminton court. Ida was escorted onto a makeshift platform by Vellore’s police training college band. She gasped as she caught sight of a huge, six-layer birthday cake that glowed with eighty colored lights.
Ida sat down on yet another floral birthday chair, and then twenty-two of the staff children paraded in front of her. Each child was dressed in the national costume of one of the countries or Indian provinces that had sent cash gifts for Ida’s personal use. One by one the children kissed their Auntie Ida and placed in her lap a gold purse containing the amount given by the country or province that each child represented.
When the gifts were tallied, they amounted to twenty thousand dollars. Invested properly, the money would be enough to make sure that Ida lived in comfort the rest of her life. However, Ida had other ideas about what a proper investment was.
The morning following Ida’s birthday, Dr. Edward Gault, the men’s dean at the medical college, showed Ida the newly completed men’s dorm—a primitive building with a thatched roof.
“That’s no way to treat the men!” Ida chided him.
“The need was desperate,” Edward apologized, “and it was all we could afford. We have more elaborate plans drawn up, and as soon as all the money comes in, we will make a start.”
“Ha!” Ida exclaimed. “If I’d waited for the money to come in before I started, there wouldn’t be anything here! If we want a permanent men’s dorm, we need to get going. How much will it cost?”
“Around $160,000 to do it properly,” Edward replied.
“I have the first $20,000 to put in,” Ida said. “What better place to invest the money than in the young men of India?”
Ida thought for a moment. She had another $10,000 in a special account to go to the Vellore Hospital after she died. “Make that $30,000,” she said. “Come on. Let’s make the announcement and turn over the sod to begin the project this afternoon. Waiting for the money to come in, indeed!”
“I suppose we could begin with that amount of money and then stop when the money runs out and wait until we can raise more,” Dr. Gault said.
“God will provide,” Ida assured him. “Once you start, I am sure everything will fall into place. It always has.”
That afternoon Ida dug a spade into the ground, turned the sod, and announced that the men’s hostel building project was under way. Her enthusiasm was contagious. The following week one of the students made a model of the proposed men’s hostel and took a photograph of it. The photograph was printed onto cards, and each card was sold for the price of a single brick. Thousands of the cards were sold. In addition, the Madras Chamber of Commerce took up the challenge and raised ten thousand dollars toward the project. Other donations came in from as far away as Australia.
On subsequent visits to Vellore, Ida watched as the three-story building rose on its foundation. The building went ahead steadily and was never once held up for lack of funds. Ida, of course, was on hand to open the new building when it was finished.
As the years passed, Ida continued to get up at 5:30 every morning and work an hour or more in her garden after breakfast. Her health continued to be excellent, so good, in fact, that she played tennis with people a quarter of her age and often beat them!
When she was eighty-two, Ida did have a minor hernia operation. It was the first time she had been a patient on the operating table instead of standing over it, and she enjoyed the novelty of the whole event. She was given a local anesthetic and, with the use of a mirror, was able to follow the progress of the entire operation. She recovered in grand style, surrounded by fresh flowers every day and adorned with immaculately styled hair. Each morning before the visitors arrived, one of the nurses volunteered to style Ida’s hair.
Ida had other novel experiences too. At eighty-five she accepted Ida Belle’s invitation to go on an elephant trek into the jungle of Mysore. Merely getting up onto and down from an elephant would have put most eighty-five-year-old women off, but Ida could not wait to begin this latest adventure. It began at three in the morning, when Ida was roused from her bed at the guest house. Half an hour later both Ida Scudders were standing in front of an enormous elephant. With much pushing and shoving, Ida was positioned just behind the animal’s head, with Ida Belle behind her. Soon the two women were bumping through the jungle at tree height. After ten minutes of the elephant’s constant pitching, Ida announced, “This is dreadful!”
“Do you want to go back, Aunt Ida?” her niece asked sympathetically.
“Mercy, no!” Ida replied. Dreadful or not, she was having the time of her life.
The sun rose to reveal lush tropical jungle. Occasionally Ida saw deer darting away from them. It was a day she talked about with guests for months to come.
In June 1955 Ida attended the opening of the Leprosy Research Sanatorium at Karigeri. She was particularly pleased because this was a joint project with the Vellore hospital and the British Mission to Lepers, a group that encouraged Dr. Brand’s experimentation with new medicines and techniques for treating leprosy.
Even though she lived at Hill Top, Ida kept up-to-date with national events. She was particularly impressed with the job Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was doing in community development, and so she was delighted to be invited to a function he would be attending. It was the centenary celebration of the University of Madras, and Ida had a front-row seat. Nehru was to be the guest speaker at the event.
As the procession of dignitaries walked up the aisle, the audience remained seated, as it had been instructed to do. Everyone stayed seated, that is, except Ida Scudder.
“Do sit down, Aunt Ida,” Ida Belle said, pulling on her aunt’s sleeve.
“But I came here to see the prime minister, and I can’t see him when I am sitting down,” she explained matter-of-factly. She remained standing until the vice chancellor spotted her. He waved and stopped the procession so that he could introduce Ida to the prime minister.
