Every problem, that is, except the one that was visited on Rummel herself in the predawn hours of Tues., Jan. 12. "I was making up the bed," she remembers, "when I just doubled over and began bleeding—from everywhere—like there was no tomorrow." At first, both Rummel and her doctors were mystified. But after being rushed to a hospital in Dothan, Ala., Rummel was told she was in the late stages of liver cancer and had little more than two months to live.
The first thing Rummel did was gather together her family—husband Larry, 44, a pharmacist; her only child, Richard, 18, a college student in nearby Americus; and her widowed father, Clyde Fitzgerald, 71, a retired civil engineer. Then, as one of only three physicians left practicing in Colquitt, she did something entirely characteristic of her strong sense of place: She started searching for her own replacement. "This [town] has sustained my family for nearly 20 years, and I owe these people a lot," says Rummel, her eyes brimming with tears. "They gave us a beautiful life. And now I've got to do everything I can to find them a new doctor."
In the weeks following her diagnosis, she posted a notice on a Web site called Heartwarmers. Says Rummel: "It basically said that if you're a family practitioner and want to do small-town medicine and have a good life, then hurry on down and check this out, because you have an opportunity right now." Within weeks, the offer drew some 50 responses. Too weak to conduct the interviews herself, Rummel referred prospective candidates to the local hospital. "It's what keeps me going," she says. "We had two hits yesterday, and a nice young doctor came to the house to see me. If I could just know this was settled, then it would be all right."
Not entirely, of course. "There is going to be a void here—a big, big void," says a saddened India Taylor, head of the local chamber of commerce. "Unless you have a large volume to devote to the subject, there's no way we can tell you what Peggy Rummel means to this town." It was in 1982, after meeting and marrying her husband while still a medical student in Charleston, S.C., that Rummel attended a job fair in Atlanta where doctors were being recruited for small, rural towns. "In other places, they'd tell us how many minutes away the shopping mall was," she recalls. "Here, the people asked us what kind of life we were looking for." The couple moved to Colquitt the same week Peggy finished her residency. "Within the first three weeks, I delivered my first baby," she says. "It was wonderful right from the start."
The feeling was mutual. Colquitt's residents remember how, when a destitute couple needed to take their sick baby to a specialist in Augusta, six hours away, Rummel gassed up her station wagon and handed them the keys; they remember, too, that when no one else could, she cooked all the food for the local high school prom. More recently, as word of Rummel's condition began to spread through town, "the doorbell rang," says her father. "And there, standing on the doorstep, was an elderly woman in her late 80s, leaning on a walker. She was all by herself, bringing a container of turnip greens that she'd picked herself and cooked. She'd had breast cancer and wasn't well, but here she was, saying, 'We're going to take care of Dr. Peggy.' "
By early April, it seemed Rummel's final task might be nearing its end. According to Miller County Hospital administrator Harley Smith, the town is in serious negotiation with the same young man who visited Rummel's house—a 34-year-old doctor whose wife is expecting their first child in May. "He's willing to do O.B. as well as everything else, which is wonderful," says Smith. "People won't have to leave town to have their babies. They can have them here, the way they did with Dr. Rummel."
Sitting now in her family room, surrounded by her cherished Star Trek memorabilia and color photos of her prizewinning roses, Rummel, now painfully weakened, describes her likely successor as "perfect, a real nice gentleman." And then she adds quietly, "I just so hope he comes—and that I get to see him starting out. Because the only thing that matters to me is making sure I've done everything I can."
Susan Schindehette
Gail Cameron Wescott in Colquitt
- Contributors:
- Gail Cameron Wescott.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
