ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 13, 1997 TAG: 9703130007
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: PULASKI
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER THE ROANOKE TIMES
Physician, nurse-wife chose Pulaski decades ago, never left.
After delivering about 4,000 babies, Dr. G.A. Loderstedt stopped counting.
And, he observed, "that was quite a few years ago."
"We have taken care of a couple of generations here," Loderstedt said. "I have delivered babies of mothers I had delivered."
It was a common refrain for his new young women patients to inform him, "My mom wants me to tell you that you delivered me."
Now, after almost 30 years of specializing in obstetrics and gynecology, Loderstedt retired earlier this year. So did his wife, Jean, a registered nurse who oversaw his office.
No longer must Loderstedt cross Lee Highway from his home to Columbia Pulaski Community Hospital's operating room each day around 7 a.m., then face an afternoon of office hours, and sometimes a delivery which went into the early morning hours of the following day - before it would start all over again.
"I find it quite enjoyable, not to storm out of the house at the crack of dawn," he said.
None of their four children followed their parents into health careers. "They saw my hours," Loderstedt said with a chuckle.
"I gave up obstetrics a couple of years ago and just continued gynecology, mainly surgery, and the hours were fairly decent," he said. "I don't have any regrets, but I think the way I did it was probably asking for punishment." Today, he said, doctors band together in group practices where they can take turns having some time off.
Loderstedt grew up in Berlin, where his mother was one of the first nurses caring for polio patients. She later joined him and his wife in Pulaski, and is buried here.
Before graduating from medical school, Loderstedt had visited the United States in the 1950s as an exchange student. He came by ship, trans-Atlantic air flights not yet being common, and still remembers his first sight of the Statue of Liberty at sunrise on his arrival.
"That was the first trip I had ever taken out of the country," he said. "It was fun."
Back in Germany, he worked at the largest U.S. Air Force hospital in Europe, at Wiesbaden, and later at the largest jet fighter base in Bitburg.
He returned to the United States and, during his last year of training in obstetrics and gynecology, submitted his name to a program which placed physicians in communities where their specialties were needed. He and his wife had a number of offers, but chose Pulaski because the people were friendly, needed someone in his field, and the landscape reminded him of some parts of Germany.
One of the biggest changes in his field, he said, is that more women doctors are getting into it. "A lot of young women like the idea of being able to go to another woman," he said. Nearly half the residency slots in gynecology are held by women now, he said, "so that is one thing that is definitely changing in my particular field."
Another change is in the delivery process itself.
"When I started out, there was no such thing as women who wanted to go through natural childbirth," he said. The attitude was "'Give me something when it hurts!' ... That has changed."
Lamaze classes for both prospective parents and husbands in the delivery room are among the other changes he has seen. "That was totally taboo," he said. Husbands would say they were going home for a drink, call them when it was over, he said. "And the women would say 'Send him home! I want him out of here.'"
"Families would be a lot smaller if the men had to do it," he said. "Only one. I can guarantee you that."
Part of the change in attitude, he said, may stem from "the back-to-nature thing. Also, women wanting to be more in control of the process."
Loderstedt was delivering babies even before choosing that as a specialty.
"Before I specialized, I worked for a few years as a family practitioner. And, in those days, all family practitioners delivered babies," he said. "I decided that I really liked that."
Loderstedt has found things to do since retiring.
"The one thing that I have done ... I really got interested in computer applications," he said. "I had never played with a computer before, so I took an introductory course here at the [New River] Community College."
His oldest son works for IBM in Raleigh, N.C., and secured and installed the computer. "I will probably, before it is all over, get some more instruction to use it to its fullest potential," Loderstedt said. Also, he said, "I would like to do some traveling, but we haven't done any of it yet."
They will soon be traveling to Charlotte, N.C., where their daughter is expecting her first child soon. It will be their third grandchild.
LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: PAUL DELLINGER/THE ROANOKE TIMES. Dr. G.A. Loderstedtby CNBand his wife, Jean, have retired after almost 30 years in obstetrics
and gynecology.